OLAF GROWALD
It’s “full circle” for Brandy O’Quinn, the new assistant director at TechFW, a longtime development executive whom the Fort Worth incubator and accelerator hired this winter to help plot out an aggressive path and raise money for it.
O’Quinn most recently directed the fundraising for The Dash, Trinity Metro’s flashy red electric circulator buses that connect downtown to the Cultural District and Dickies Arena along the West 7th corridor. She was senior manager for public affairs for Blue Zones Project Fort Worth during its successful effort to win healthy living certification for the city. O’Quinn was also president of the Camp Bowie District economic development organization.
And years earlier, when she worked as director of local business development for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce years earlier, O’Quinn played a small role in the creation of Bio Med Tech, which became the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center.
“Twenty-two years later, I get to come full circle and play a small part in this,” she says.
In its strategy to fully develop tools that encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses in the city and remain here, Fort Worth wants to broaden TechFW’s influence. It’s hatched biotechs like Encore Vision (sold in late 2016 for $465 million) and Eosera, an ear care products company that has quickly achieved national distribution. But at the same time, TechFW has kept a low profile, and fundraising hasn’t been strong. The organization had a $600,000 budget in 2020, not including the value of TechFW’s use of city facilities for its offices.
TechFW’s goals for the new year include:
• Increasing the number of startups it supports at any given time to 40, from 30 today. TechFW will run two cohorts this year of eight startups apiece through its first ThinkLab accelerator program in Dallas; some number of ThinkLab firms typically emerge from ThinkLab and move to TechFW’s longer-term programs each year.
• Grow Cowtown Angels membership to 70 members from the current 52 and raise the number of women in the membership to 20%-25% from the current 11.
• Grow private sponsorship. The eventual goal is 11%-14% of revenue from 7%.
• Consider rebranding, to acknowledge partnerships with the University of Texas at Arlington, University of North Texas Health Science Center, and the new one in Dallas.
“Entrepreneurs may launch their company and their technology in Fort Worth, and then they leave,” says O’Quinn, who describes her duties as building and fostering TechFW’s existing relationships, forging new ones, and helping the organization and city “create a climate of innovation.”
Since TechFW launched the Cowtown Angels in 2012, members have individually invested less than $25 million in 46 companies. The angels, whose members make independent decisions and don’t invest together as a group, have had two successful exits — Encore Vision, the first.
“It’s really a great opportunity for someone that has disposable income that would like to invest and work with an emerging founder,” O’Quinn says.
She’ll also play a role in talks about rebranding. TechFW wants to explore a name that recognizes its geographic range. “This is where our headquarters is,” O’Quinn says. “The city of Fort Worth is our birth parent, but we’re grown up now.”