Oliver Fritsch´s MarketingBlog

Heike Mayer, Assistant Professor Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, created an awesome looking map of Boise, Idaho based tech startups.

As you know, I absolutely love smart graphics.

Heike, a fellow German, created an image of the tech universe in Treasure Valley. At the center you see the “Stars” (or sometimes “black holes” if you like), Micron (Public, NYSE:MU), Hewlett Packard (Public, NYSE:HPQ), and Boise State University. Concentric rings around them show the years of startup companies whose founders left these big companies and ventured out on their own. It also shows relationships between them. The big arrow in the image obviously points to my companies, VocationLab LC and Cendesic.com

What stroke me when looking at the map was the large number of companies flying around in this community of just 250000 people living here – most of which I had never heard of, let alone know what they are doing. This map could be a great starting point for someone of getting in touch and connecting us all. The obvious choices: our Chamber of Commerce or the local press seem to be asleep at the wheel in this regard. Heike, maybe you want to take a stab at it? You´ve got all the data at your fingertips now

The map is available as a poster being distributed by Idaho TechConnect and the Department of Commerce. (Contact Krissa Wrigley at 562-3701 (krissa.wrigley@idahotechconnect.com) or Julie Howard at 334-2470 (julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov) to order copies.) Thanks to Eddie Kovsky from the Idaho Business Review for writing in his blog about this map.