It is largely uncommon that a community gets to claim access to resources, talent, and opportunity the way Wake Forest, North Carolina does.
Wake Forest is easily recognizable as an Eden for quality of life standards that are hard to match. Years of growth here, however, have created not just an infrastructure capable of supporting the 218% population boom brought on by the past two decades, but have seen the strategic evolution of a larger culture that is fueling entrepreneurial opportunity. This“innovation infrastructure” represents a unique culmination of culture, resources, spaces, and lifestyle that define Wake Forest and has set a course for a future open to business and entrepreneurial success of prodigious proportions.
This unique ecosystem of innovation is exhibited by elements including a network containing hundreds of miles of high-speed fiber, a selection of coworking and business incubator spaces, an expansive system of navigable greenways strategically connecting living and working, a culture of accessible and skilled mentorship, world-class research and innovation, and more.
“As we looked at Wake Forest and began recognizing the elements that are actively shaping entrepreneurial culture here, we started realizing how unique the opportunity found here really is,” said Jason Cannon, President of the Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership (WFBIP). “Our community is marketable not just because of the rich quality of life, but because here there’s a proven track record of businesses succeeding and benefitting from the pro-growth infrastructure.”
Two broad categories shape the entrepreneur-centered infrastructure in Wake Forest: physical resources like fiber, greenway navigability, and innovation, coworking, and incubator spaces; and cultural values like pro-business governance, a well-above-average educated workforce, and a culture of accessible business mentorship.
“Recognizing these valuable resources is significant for the community,” said Cannon. “But it’s also pivotal to understand not just what the resources are, but what they mean for the future of Wake Forest as this community continues its upward growth trajectory both for living and working opportunities.”
What this infrastructure of innovation really means is that Wake Forest is providing a space for entrepreneurs to launch, grow, and succeed. The support networks found in Wake Forest have a proven track record of capturing fledgling ideas and turning them into stories of not just business success but also of positive local, regional, and global impact.
“This whole area is wonderful for breeding entrepreneurs and cultivating the entrepreneurial community that’s here,” said Sidney Hinton, founder, and former CEO of PowerSecure, a distributive generation company that supplies 87% of the nation’s micro-power grids. “We started in my house and the first building I bought was the closest commercial property to my house.” Still headquartered in Wake Forest, in a facility significantly larger than Hinton’s garage, PowerSecure has expanded 14 times since the company's inception, employs over 1500, and is now publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
PowerSecure has produced 87% of all micro-grids in the United States to bring about distributed energy across the country. Now on the New York Stock Exchange, PowerSecure started and is still headquartered in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Two of the cornerstones in this ecosystem come in the shape of research and design facilities and entrepreneurial incubation spaces. Complementing the diverse spectrum of corporate R&D locations in Wake Forest are spaces like the Wireless Research Center and Radeas Labs who welcome the exploration and development of ideas for startups outside of their organizations and who are committed to the mentorship of fledgling companies in their respective fields.
“We have some great technology companies here,” said Rich Brancaccio, founder and CEO at Revibe Technologies, an IoT startup creating wearables to help those with attention disorders stay focused. “It’s an intangible positive for a company. There’s a real feeling in Wake Forest that we all want to help each other as businesses, that we all want to pull each other up by the bootstraps. You can easily find a group of entrepreneurs here to help learn about troubles, problems, questions, concerns, and solutions that other like-minded entrepreneurs in Wake Forest have come up with.”
For ten years, the Wireless Research Center (WRC), an independent, non-profit research organization, has offered specialized testing capabilities, engineering resources, physical office space, and more to growing entrepreneurs. The WRC has helped launch over 80 companies since its inception.
Radeas Labs, an advanced bio-testing enterprise, is actively providing set-aside space within their offices and labs for entrepreneurial ambitions to grow and succeed with access to resources, consulting, and business mentorship.
Among others, these companies are indicative of the larger work climate in Wake Forest. They make the challenges of business success easier to navigate and provide access to experience and resources that are often hard to come by in the startup world. While individual companies have been contributing to this innovation culture for quite some time, the Town is in the midst of what could be the most significant infrastructural development to date.
In efforts to create an entrepreneurial hub in the community where workspace, gathering space, and targeted business incubation could occur, the WFBIP and Loading Dock, a Triangle-based coworking organization, entered a public-private partnership in 2019. Opening in 2021, Loading Dock Wake Forest, will be a 24,000 square foot coworking space in downtown Wake Forest that will significantly complement two existing, downtown coworking spaces.
“In Wake Forest, we possess the cultural building blocks that lead to a community’s consistent entrepreneurial success,” said Cannon. “What we have desperately needed is more of the physical infrastructure to continue allowing our people to see growth, instead of facing a drive to Raleigh and Durham because they can’t find adequate places to work and excel. Loading Dock Wake Forest, in many ways, will be the crown jewel of this entrepreneur-rich community.
Another important element in Wake Forest’s innovation infrastructure is quality of life and the amenities in the community that make it happen.
“The staff here at Revibe get really excited about living here. It’s a lot of fun to live here,” said Brancaccio. “ It’s great for employees and their families. They love the parks and greenways. We have everything a big city or town would have, but in a more finely packaged, family-friendly environment” said Brancaccio.
With more than 50 outdoor events annually (pre-COVID-19), over 50 miles of developed and natural greenways, and in excess of 550 acres of parks and open space, Wake Forest is consistently ranked among the best places to live in North Carolina. Not only is it livable, but the community boasts one of the highest educated populations, with 54% of residents having a bachelor’s degree or higher - 21.6% higher than the national average.
Whether working from home, in a coworking or incubator space, or buying the nearest commercial property, these pieces of infrastructure combined with readily available high-speed fiber, cultural values like mentorship and pro-growth governance, access to innovation space, smart city initiatives, and more are continually advancing to create the best possible ecosystem for living, playing, and especially working in Wake Forest.
“Wake Forest is writing new history,” said Brancaccio. In this town, opportunity is just as abundant as community.
DISCOVER MORE : Testimonials
Gerard Hayes, PhD
President and CEO
Wireless Research Center of NC
“The future of technology in Wake Forest is pretty unlimited, it’s basically limited by your imagination….Here in Wake Forest we have the Wireless Research Center which is a unique asset right on the edge, the cutting edge of developing those technologies..”
John Jamieson
Senior Adviser
Ultra Electronics-Ocean Systems
"For me [Wake Forest] was an easy decision because it made good business sense. For one thing the cost of doing business and the business culture here, the sort of culture of cooperation with small businesses here in Wake Forest, and then from a personal perspective it was quality of life.”
Rich Brancaccio
CEO and Founder
ReVibe Technologies
“From an entrepreneurial perspective, Wake Forest is a great opportunity. I think it’s a really untapped resource at this point in terms of setting up your business. There’s a real feeling in Wake Forest that we all want to help each other, as businesses, to pull each other up by the bootstraps. We have everything that a big town or city would have in a much more nicely packaged, family friendly environment”.
