Q&A: From Big Apple to Big Easy, Balch draws on former founder experience to assist New Orleans startups

Photos courtesy Scarlet Raven Photography.

It takes a high level of physical, emotional stamina, and resilience to be a founder of a startup, said Megan Balch. Balch should know; she is a founder herself.

“How many times can you get punched in the face, get rejected, and continue to show up and smile? But you believe in your idea, you put your best foot forward for investors, employees, constantly display the energy to problem solve in a difficult, pressure-filled environment, and that rewarding feeling of succeeding after a resilient journey is unlike any other.”

Balch joined The Idea Village in November 2022 as Program Director, responsible for IDEAinstitute, VILLAGEx, and additional programs produced by the nonprofit that supports regional startups. The IDEAinstitute’s Fall 2023 cohort is METRONOME, a 10-week music business accelerator program tailored to providing resources, programming, and mentorship for entrepreneurs who seek to solve problems or create new opportunities in the music industry.
Before joining The Idea Village, Balch was CEO and co-founder of Flagpole NYC, a designer swimwear and beachwear company that she ran for more than 10 years. Balch has experience in conceptualizing, building, and growing B2B (Business-to-Business) and DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) businesses, research and development, budgeting, digital marketing, e-commerce, design, product development and production, logistics, and employee development.
Balch has a bachelor of science from New York University. She has lectured at her alma mater, in addition to Yale University, mentoring students on entrepreneurship, product launches, and marketing. “It has been therapeutic for me as a founder myself to move to New Orleans and support startups through my lived experience,” Balch said. “Many times, founders have gotten where they are through the support of previous founders mentoring them, and I strive every day to do that as a part of The Idea Village team.”

New Orleans ranks No. 9 among the “Top 10 Cities for Entrepreneurship” by Gusto, a cloud-based payroll and benefits company that ranks

Megan Balch

cities by number of business applications per capita. Founded in 2002, The Idea Village has served more than 16,000 entrepreneurs with more than $33 million in total resources provided, more than $500 million in capital raised by The Idea Village alumni, and close to 100,000 consulting hours from professional service providers.

Why is it important for New Orleans to have a startup community?

New Orleans and so many other places stand to highly benefit from the outcomes of having a robust startup ecosystem. One reason that New Orleans must do so is to keep pace with other mid-size cities that use startups as a strong anchor in the local economy. The main reason being is that successful startups have been proven to create the most net new jobs in an economy. Startups attract new wealth (investments), talent, create new opportunities for residents, and they help New Orleans generally stay competitive in a world where technology and the digital age are rapidly changing. I say that any growing city or city that wishes to grow should be thinking about creating startup hubs as a strategic plan to boost local economic development.

What is the biggest reason why startups choose to stay in New Orleans? Why do some leave? What is our city’s biggest asset and drawback?

New Orleans has a growing ecosystem of startup support; The Idea Village was founded over 20 years ago. A few years later, Katrina came through and, as we like to say at The Idea Village, ‘After Katrina, everyone in New Orleans had to become an entrepreneur.’ Today, we see a growing number of entrepreneurial support organizations. Combining that with our city’s unique culture and quality of life, we see companies choose to anchor here long-term. Now, some may end up going elsewhere in pursuit of more large-scale customers (Louisiana only has two Fortune 500s), and that is a tough market for startups looking to scale quickly. Or they pursue greater access to venture capital, but ultimately, creating nationally or globally-oriented companies who have strong ties to New Orleans will only benefit our economy in the long-run.

Entrepreneur Magazine highlights four pillars that define a great startup city – community support, low cost of living, infrastructure support and technical assistance, and the ability to establish roots. How is New Orleans doing along these pillars?

We have advantages when it comes to cost of living and growing technical assistance and support. We should make sure that local and native New Orleanians are getting to take advantage of the support and assistance offered to startups. We need to think more collectively in our ability to build nationally and globally when we are talking about solving problems.

What is critical to startups’ success? What is the most common downfall? 

Based on my experience as a startup founder and having worked with dozens of founders at The Idea Village, I believe that what’s crucial for founders to nail is to keep operations lean. That means that entrepreneurs should be focused on constantly testing what is and is not working in their startups (especially during the earlier stages), and then rapidly adapting either their product, service, team, operations, and/or other. It is also crucial for founders to have a firm grasp on their product market fit (PMF) before raising or spending too much money. Product market fit is a moving target and to maintain PMF, founders should never get too far away from customer feedback.

What have been the most recent challenges for startups?

Investment funds and other forms of accessing capital are more expensive and harder to come by. And with the failing of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), more investors are taking increased precautions and due diligence when investing in tech startups compared to before.

Beyond New Orleans and Silicon Valley, are there other major accelerators and centers of startup activity? Is there industry standards/best-in-class practices that are shared?

GAN – Global Accelerator Network, now known as Morrow – is a great organization that shares best practices and offers people within the startup community best in-class resources, networking opportunities, and more. I respect what cities like Boulder and Austin are building and look to them as cities to emulate.

What accelerators would you recommend for early or later stage startup founders?

There are phenomenal programs across the country for founders at all stages, but for founders around the Greater New Orleans region and Gulf South area, I have to shout out some of the programs The Idea Village offers, that are really geared towards this “startup”-type of entrepreneurship. For early-stage founders, IDEAinstitute introduces founders to the tools they need to turn an idea into a scalable venture. For people ready to take on venture capital in the $1 million range, I recommend looking for a program like VILLAGEx, The Idea Village’s later-stage accelerator that we run 1x/year, or something similar.

Do you have a memorable startup you have been a part of in your first year?

I’m still new to the ecosystem, but I would say Glass Half Full, which is a two-sided business model that recycles sand and broken glass into products that support coastal restoration and eco-construction. They are a testament to what growing a large healthy business that makes a positive change in the community can look like. I believe they are one of the companies setting the stage for future climate tech founders to build the scalable companies that will make New Orleans a hub for Climate Tech Innovation.