Summary:

With $1 million pushed into Saint Paul's economy, we could build a better Saint Paul, create jobs and provide valuable services to neighborhood businesses and artists to help them flourish. "Start-Up Saint Paul" would insert start-up companies into Saint Paul. The start-ups would place willing entrepreneur's into leadership positions to lead start-ups, recruit Saint Paul college graduates, possibly make the start-ups non-profits for more flexibility or provide tax breaks for all start-ups. The start-ups would provide free services to interested Saint Paul businesses for two years - however - they would need to recruit new business to stay viable (possibly a 70/30 model).

My idea is to have three start-ups:
1. Marketing and digital start-up would help small businesses and artists in Saint Paul by offering to create marketing campaigns, advertise their studios or businesses, handle social media, and teach them how to think creativity to help business grow through marketing.
2. Tech start-up would build websites for small businesses and artists, as well as teach them how to maintain the sites on their own.
3. Mobile start-up would create mobile and web-based apps to connect Saint Paul small businesses and artists to their community and the rest of the Twin Cities.

With the new partnership between Google and CoCo Minneapolis, we could tap resources, brain power and networking opportunities at CoCo Saint Paul to kickstart the start-ups.

If Saint Paul is going to continue to flourish, this grant could provide tools to help many levels of need across the entire city.