At the fall SCN Summit in Des Moines, Andy Stoll of the Kauffman Foundation was asked about the future of data for ecosystem builders. He predicted that in the next few years, practitioners would be able to access real-time data that tracked the engagement of founders across an ecosystem and connected that impact to venture growth.
That data exists right now and is being used by ecosystem builders, university programs, and investors in 21 states. The Fluency Score works like a real-time, standardized metric of company traction and growth, giving ecosystem builders a window into how programs, mentors, events, and other support activities impact the companies in their community.
The SCN Fluency Score Challenge
With the upcoming SCN Challenge, SCN members have an opportunity to take the Fluency Score to its next, exciting phase.
In addition to accessing this industry-leading data for your organization and community for an entire year, by being a part of this SCN Challenge, you'll be contributing to the market's first real-time traction benchmarking data. All participating organizations will have their data anonymized and analyzed to build datasets you can use to tell the story of how your companies compare by industry sector, developmental stage, funding raised, and other relevant metrics.
Measuring Program Impact for Sustainability
When an organization tracks all of the companies they support using the Fluency Score on a quarterly basis, they get real-time metrics on what is impacting the growth of these companies. The data could show that some of your programs are having a larger than expected impact. Perhaps it shows that activities aren't moving the needle. As you use this data to track your companies, you also gain insights into what activities within your organization and your community matter the most.
Using data like this to determine what activities your organization should add, expand, or kill is a huge driver in building a program that succeeds at its mission. Using this data to also demonstrate impact to your financial stakeholders is how you drive sustainability over the long term.
The future of startups and ecosystem building includes robust, actionable data to drive better and better outcomes for the companies we all support. As ecosystem building professionals, having real-time data like the Fluency Score is a powerful tool to create sustainability and success within your organizations.
The registration deadline is June 13 and the challenge starts June 15. Learn more and register here.