Downtown accelerator hires CEO

Springboard Baton Rouge, a new startup “accelerator” based at the Kress at Third & Main downtown, isn’t quite ready to open. But it does have a CEO: James Digby, co-founder of Rockstart Accelerator in Amsterdam. Springboard managing partner John Schneider brought Digby to Baton Rouge in September to speak at a kickoff event for the Capital Regions Venture Partners fund. “Just jokingly, [Schneider] said, ‘Do you want a job?’ ” Digby recalls. “I said, ‘Yeah, sounds good.’ I thought it was just banter or politeness.” But after further conversations, they decided Digby actually was a good fit. “The entrepreneur scene is still rather fragmented [here],” Digby says. “The potential of what the region can offer really excites me.” He says he hopes to create an entrepreneurial “melting pot” at Springboard that will include both private offices and a common workspace. Digby, raised in London, says he was one of the founding facilitators for the international Startup Weekend, and he sits on the boards of several startups in fields ranging from cloud computing to financial products. Digby will be one of the panelists at Pitch Night, hosted by SeNSE at The Lyceum downtown, 6 p.m. today. Presenting companies will be Betternumbers.net, an online food journal app for health professionals; iPar, an app for tracking public safety personnel in emergency situations; and Pixel Dash Studios, a digital media firm. —David Jacobs