After more than 10 years in Baton Rouge, Louis Freeman Jr. was preparing to move back to his native New Orleans late last year when he was approached about running Innovation Catalyst, the Research Park Corp.’s nonprofit venture development organization that provides startup money to fledgling businesses.
As Business Report details in a feature from its new issue, Freeman wasn’t looking for a job at the time and he’d never heard of Innovation Catalyst, which surprised him given his nearly three decades in the field of private investment and his long tenure in Baton Rouge. But the more he found out about the organization, its purpose and mission, the more intrigued he became.
Within weeks, he accepted the position of CEO, which was vacated last fall when Jeanne Bayless resigned. He officially took over in mid-February, and in the two months since he has been formulating a game plan to do what no one, despite years of trying, has yet been able to accomplish: Develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Baton Rouge.
“Over the last 10 years New Orleans has developed a reputation for being an entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Freeman says. “Pilgrims flock there to be a part of it. That is what we are trying develop here. … We still have a long way to go.”
That Freeman was unfamiliar with Innovation Catalyst until he took the position isn’t really that surprising. Most people have never heard of it. If they have, they probably haven’t put much stock in it anyway. Previous efforts by the RPC to create a source of venture capital for startups in the market—including the Regional Innovation Organization, which worked in conjunction with nonprofit venture development organization JumpStart—never took off for a variety of reasons.
But Innovation Catalyst is different. Originally incarnated by the RPC in 2014 as Step One Ventures, Innovation Catalyst consists of a nonprofit, evergreen fund—the Catalyst Fund—that is seeded with grant money, private donations and federal funds administered by the state. As such, it has an altruistic mission that is more focused on building successful businesses for the good of the community than in enriching individual investors.
The organization was just beginning to find its footing and make investments from the Catalyst Fund in 2015 when Bayless resigned for personal reasons. As a result, Innovation Catalyst’s mission has never been effectively communicated to the entrepreneurial community.
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