Connect Northwest takes new direction

A year after it was launched, Spokane area economic development agency Connect Northwest has broken out of its eggshell and ready to do its own thing.

Launched in early 2003 by the Inland Northwest Technology Education Center (INTEC), Connect Northwest suddenly has the same ambitions any teenager has — dreams of success and only enough funds in the bank to last the rest of the year.

Last week, INTEC board members voted to separate Connect Northwest and make it a stand-alone independent nonprofit agency.

Now the hard part begins, said Bill Kalivas, who’s directed the program for the past 12 months and is the interim executive director of Connect Northwest.

Modeled after a similar idea in San Diego, Connect Northwest tries to accelerate the growth of area tech firms through a network of experienced business professionals or capitalists.

It doesn’t charge money for the service. “We don’t anticipate charging in the foreseeable future,” added Kalivas. That non-payment system allows Connect to remain a “neutral broker” in helping deliver services and help to companies, he said.

Kalivas says it makes sense to be cut free from INTEC, which has run into funding problems.

“In effect, we’ve been given a clean slate,” he said.

In a little more than a year, Connect Northwest worked with several area companies, lining up financing in one case, introducing a buyer to a software start-up, and connecting a seasoned, retired businessman with a third Spokane tech firm.

Lewis Rumpler, CEO of INTEC, said Connect Northwest did all that many in the community expected it to do in its first full year.

“The fact that we were able to create a whole new program focused on the innovation economy is a big accomplishment,” he said. “You can’t find a similar program in this community that inspired the same optimism over the past year or so,” Rumpler said.

The first four companies Connect Northwest worked with were A Perfect Web, Maplewood Software, TriGeo Network Security and IT Lifeline.

Kalivas said all four companies improved their bottom line, though he hesitates to assign full credit to the role Connect Northwest played.

A Perfect Web, a growing Spokane software-development company, was acquired last year by a larger tech firm, Next IT. Its software team is still developing the same products, but now inside a larger company.

Maplewood Software, through Connect Northwest, gained financing through a formerly retired business executive who then became the firm’s chief operating officer, Kalivas said.

IT Lifeline has won a steady portfolio of corporate customers for its security and backup services, based in Liberty Lake. And TriGeo, based in Post Falls, has pulled in more than $2 million in new capital in the past 12 months, said Kalivas.

Within a few months, Connect Northwest will need to find its own offices, a new board and then decide where it will focus its fundraising efforts.

For the past year, it’s relied on $200,000 provided to INTEC by Spokane County. The county said it will consider adding an extra $100,000 if the results are positive.

Connect Northwest also raised some private support, he added, including funds from Paine Hamblen law firm and from Avista Corp. Kalivas said the goal is to have Connect Northwest fully funded by private sources. “Connect (in San Diego) is 100 percent supported by private dollars,” he said.

Focused for now on the North Idaho-Spokane County area, Connect Northwest is also free to stretch out and offer services more widely, he said.

Once a new board is put in place, Connect Northwest directors will look at how far the word Northwest in its title should go.

“We have the option of becoming more regional, and of crossing state lines,” Kalivas said.