Trenton doesn’t have a talent program, it has a connectivity and investment opportunity, and we were grateful to sign into that this morning at Conscious Venture Lab‘s “Building an Ecosystem that Keeps Talent Home” conversation in downtown Trenton.
We explored four big questions that matter for founders, students, and employers across the region:
– What “keeping talent home” really means in Trenton’s context, and why so many people still feel that they need to leave for opportunity
– The resources that already exist here, from accelerators like CVL and the Novella Center for Entrepreneurship to local partners and civic institutions that we need to surface and connect more intentionally
– How companies, funds, accelerators, and community organizations can stop operating in silos and instead align around a shared mission to support local talent for the long haul
– What “success” could look like in five years if we get this right: a visible pipeline of Trenton founded startups, more capital staying in the city, and a generation of builders who see Trenton as the place to start and scale, not just to pass through
For us at 1435 Capital, this work is directly tied to how we deploy capital and show up as ecosystem partners in New Jersey’s innovation ecosystem. The more we listen to founders on the ground, the better we can design funding, mentorship, and networks that make it realistic, not aspiration, for talent to stay and thrive here.
Huge thanks to Jaime Coleman and Jeff Cherry and CVL for inviting us and Lucy H. Partman, PhD, José Valdez, and Ben Jen for speaking on this morning’s panel.
