With $30,000 in seed money, three Woodstock business leaders helped create Startup Woodstock, a competition to help launch new businesses.
“The idea is that the closer the company is to solving a critical need within the community, that’s a big plus,” said Cliff Johnson, one of Startup Woodstock’s organizers and judges.
Johnson moved his family from Atlanta to Woodstock during the pandemic. More than a decade ago, while working in Portland, Oregon, he founded Vacasa, an international vacation rental management company that is leaving in 2018.
Johnson organized the Woodstock race with John Spector and Larry Niles, both members of the city’s Economic Development Commission, which focuses on issues such as housing, child care and downtown revitalization. The commission provided $10,000 for the race, and an additional $20,000 came from private donors.
“We really want people to come here,” Niles said. “We’re going to do everything we can to address some of these very obvious issues or barriers to starting a business.”
High rents downtown add to the barriers, Niles said, along with the perception that Woodstock has a difficult-to-navigate bureaucracy for would-be business owners. While the former may be true, he refuted the latter, saying that nearly all business owners surveyed by the commission reported having a positive experience with local government.
Niles also rejects the idea that Woodstock only caters to a certain clientele.
“I always cringe at the thought that we’re just a rich town,” he said, “because we’re made up of a lot of merchants and a lot of people who have lived here all their lives.”
With that in mind, Niles and Johnson said Startup Woodstock hopes to cast a wide net in recruiting potential applicants for the prize money. People whose ideas may be in their infancy are invited to apply. So are service-based businesses such as electric, landscaping and childcare companies.
“A $30,000 grant can pretty easily help someone start a new child care business,” Johnson said.
The competition criteria requires the business to fill an unmet gap in the community and hopefully create living wage jobs or a sustainable owner-operated business.
If successful, Johnson said he hopes the contest will create “a culture of entrepreneurship and (allow) people to create their own destiny.”
Johnson imagines that this kind of culture could grow at Woodstock. He moved to Vermont to raise his family, enjoying the Woodstock school system, close-knit community and access to nature. He works remotely and sees the Windsor County vacation destination as attractive to more remote workers like him.
For a town of only about 3,000 people, Woodstock devotes significant resources to economic development. Since 2016, the city’s Economic Development Commission has awarded more than $1 million in grants to support events, physical infrastructure, marketing and other initiatives.
This year, the city created a program that pays landlords to convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals. The program aims to alleviate the city’s housing shortage, made even more acute by the village’s appeal to tourists. Property owners were paid $3,000 if they agreed to a one-year lease with a tenant, and $7,000 for a two-year lease.
Johnson acknowledged the “concerns that come when a community gets more vacation rentals,” including through Vacasa, adding that short-term rentals may be “a minor contributor to housing affordability.”
Still, he believes vacation rentals can be a “positive part of most communities” when they’re licensed, taxed and follow local regulations.
Although it’s a new idea, Startup Woodstock could grow if it proves successful, according to organizers. Applicants can apply until December 1, after which a yet-to-be-announced jury will narrow the field to a group of finalists by December 15. These finalists will present their ideas in February and a winner will be chosen shortly thereafter.
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