Transportation and Economic Development Corporation - Regular Meeting

Good evening. We'll call the August 28 Transportation Economic Development Corporation meeting to order. Anne, will you do the roll call, please? President Flores? Here. Vice President Thierryl? Here. Secretary Villarreal? Here. Board Member Basie? Board Member Mossman? Here. Board Member Neely? Board Member Sherwood? Here.

Thank you. Citizen communication, anybody here to address the board seeing none? D1 approval of minutes. Consider approval of the minutes from the 07/24/2025 Transportation Economic Development Corporation meeting. Any questions on the minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the minutes. Move to approve. Second. I have a motion by Secretary Real, second by Vice President Theroux. Any other discussion?

All in favor, signify by raising your hand. That passes unanimously. Thank you. That'll take us to item E. E-one, consider a resolution authorizing the president to execute a third amendment to the administration to the administration of funding agreement for the City Of Round Rock economic development program with the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce, Inc. And the city of Round Rock for the development of a business accelerated program to support early stage startups and entrepreneurs. Good evening. How are you?

President Flores and board members. This agenda item is to consider a resolution to approve an amendment to increase the funding for the Round Rock Chamber and the City of Round Rock's Economic Development Program. This increase in funding is to develop a business accelerator program to support early stage startups and entrepreneurs. As you recall earlier this year in March, we wrapped up our 2025 Innovation Ecosystems study, and all of the recommendations that came from this study fall into these four buckets that you see on the screen. We are currently working on marketing and outreach and evaluating our internal events and programs that we currently offer.

And today, we're here to talk about programming and partnerships. A top priority that came out of the program and partnership bucket was to partner with an existing accelerator program to support early stage startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to bring this type of programming here to Round Rock. A little refresher on what an accelerator is it's a time bound cohort. It's a small class program, usually five to 10 startups. And it's designed to fast track these startups.

It isn't just classroom style learning. It's hands on meeting with mentors experience that really pushes and accelerates these entrepreneurs forward. The goal is to give entrepreneurs everything they need to stay here in Round Rock and grow faster. We have traveled the country and toured some of the best in class accelerators and have found that we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can leverage partnerships with organizations that already have proven track records.

So during the development of this innovation ecosystem strategy, we requested and received proposals from national and local accelerator programs. There's a sample on the screen of some of the partners that we spoke with and that we've had the opportunity to actually interview. During the evaluation process, we also reached out to other communities across the country that have worked with various groups to get their feedback on what their experiences working with these groups were. We have identified a preferred partner, and upon receiving the funds, we'll finalize the contract and announce a selected partner in the near future. With the approval of the additional funding, the selected partner will actually hire a full time staff employee that will have a physical office space here in Round Rock that we've identified as four zero nine West Main Street.

This per staff person will help facilitate the two seven week cohorts that would take place here, as well as develop a lunch and learn series and some other community programs that will be open to chamber members and just community members in general beyond just those two cohorts. These startups for the cohorts will be in emerging target industries. And it'll be about five to seven startups that will go through those. Overall, this will help attract entrepreneurs, create new jobs, and position Round Rock as a hub for innovation, both locally and on a national stage. In order to work with the selected partner, we're asking for an additional 400,000 annually for the next three years to help get the program up and running, so a total of 1,200,000.0.

A breakdown of these annual costs can be seen on the slide. So as a reminder, the salaries will include hiring a full time staff as well as the additional staff support that they'll get from their team on their side. This also includes the office rental cost and any equipment that they'll need to get set up and the program expense as well. Again, we're asking to make an amendment to our chamber contract. Once the three years is up, we'll have the opportunity to either renew or have the selected partner identify a way to make it self sufficient. But we're excited for what this next chapter could look like. Any questions?

All right. Any questions? Thank you for the presentation. Very well done.

I just had a couple

of questions in regard to clarity on how this will work for the sake of the community.

So the first one is, how are

you going to find these startups and market to them directly to be able to bring them into this cohort?

Yeah, I think for starters, we'll start with a lot of the startups that we've already seen come through our pitch competitions, through 1,000,000, and just some of our already existing events. But we've found, through some of these larger events that we have, there are so many startups and people in the community that don't think to originally come to a chamber because they think, Oh, a church a chamber's not going to have programming for me, so we'll work with them and their their larger marketing team to do a really big marketing push in in Central Texas.

And are the startups going to have is there going to be a cost to be a part of this cohort?

No. This fee is us paying for them to get to participate. Okay. So it's free to them.

Eventually, will it be moved into the chamber offices or is it gonna always stay separate?

I think at this time for those three years, it'll be at $4.00 9 with me.

Thank you very much.

Any

other questions? I had a couple questions. So kind of follow-up on board members Mosman's question. So no fee to the applicants. Correct. And then is there any other kind of criteria? I mean, do they have to be a Round Rock resident? Do they have to place a business in Round Rock? Any any details on that?

Yes. At this time, we're thinking of doing a broad Central Texas as long as you can come in person to make it, but there will be preference to those located in Round Rock.

So I guess depending on demand, you may need to go to a Round Rock address or Round Rock resident if the demand exceeds the slots, right? I guess you'll figure that out as you go along.

I've also I just wanted to mention, in having some of these discussions with some of these other partners, they've seen it be a really great recruitment tool. They've had I talked to one, and it was ran at a state level. And she said that she had somebody from another state actually come and join one of their cohorts, and that she actually ended up relocating her company because she saw the value and what the community was willing to do for her.

Do you has it been thought of, have we thought that maybe we will require a chamber membership for them if they participate in the program?

We have not discussed that, but I could see that that's on the table.

All right. Any other questions? All right. Thanks for the presentation. I'll entertain a resolution to adopt e-one. Okay. I have a second. All right, I have a first by Board Member Moss, my second by Board Member Sherwood. Any other questions? All right. All in favor, signal by raising your hand. It passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. That is all the items on the agenda. Any other stuff for the good of the board? All right. It's 509, and we are adjourned. Thank you.