How Montgomery County’s Extensive Business Support Network Helps Local Startups

Starting a new business can be a daunting task. With entrepreneurs having to juggle everything from hiring employees to raising funds to finding a business location, it’s no wonder that approximately 20% of new businesses fail in their first year.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, where more than $430M in venture capital was raised in 2021, local public and private organizations have taken steps to ensure that startups and their owners have the tools they will need to overcome the odds. 

With its location near Washington, D.C., and Baltimore and proximity to federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and government research and funding sources, the area is a major life sciences cluster that attracts companies from around the globe. Even so, the county’s business community is diversified well beyond the life sciences sector and includes many small businesses in technology, hospitality, retail, manufacturing and other industries including nonprofits.

“A lot of folks are surprised when I tell them more than 95% of the businesses in Montgomery County have 50 or fewer employees,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said. “That’s why we created a business advancement team in my office to ensure that small businesses and the tools to aid businesses were consolidated and empowered to cut through red tape.”

Elrich said the pandemic highlighted both the importance and vulnerability of small businesses in the county. The business advancement team worked with partner organizations in the county to provide more than $45M worth of funding and more than 3,000 grants to small businesses during the pandemic.

The county is working to obtain another round of federal rental relief to assist small retail businesses. But the pandemic isn’t the only problem small businesses face, Elrich noted.  

“Inflation, supply chain and staffing issues are the challenges I hear about the most,” he said. “While we can’t control all of those issues, we can continue to work to make it as easy as possible for entrepreneurs to do business with and in the county.”

The Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. helps connect businesses to the support and resources they need — from finding the ideal location to qualifying for incentives and more — to be successful.

MCEDC Director of Economic Development Jerry Sanford said that helping local startups requires the participation of many people, organizations and the resources they can provide. He said MCEDC works with the county’s business advancement team as well as many other groups at the local, county and state levels to help fledgling businesses.  

“Economic development is a team sport,” Sanford said. “And we’re very fortunate to be co-located with WorkSource Montgomery, which is our county's workforce development agency, and Visit Montgomery, the destination marketing organization for the county.”

MCEDC also publishes a 20-page-plus guide that lists dozens of organizations and resources that can assist small businesses, including those with minority, female, disabled or military veteran owners, Sanford said.

“At the county level, we work very closely with a number of different agencies, including with their business advancement team,” he said. “So, if you have permitting or regulatory issues, there's a team of folks there to help. And the county’s incubator network is based there, too.”

Seraxis, a biotech company whose mission is to cure insulin-dependent diabetes, was one of the local firms that benefited from the incubator network.

“In our first years, Seraxis was located in the Germantown Innovation Center,” Seraxis Chief Business Officer Carole Welsch said. “This facility aided the successful growth of the company by providing a flexible environment to acquire laboratories and office space as needed without long-term commitment. The center also brought together like-minded entrepreneurs to share ideas and opportunities.”

Overall, Welsch described the business environment of Montgomery County as “vibrant and supportive of startups with grants, mentorship programs, incubator facilities and seed-funding opportunities available to first-time entrepreneurs.”

To Sanford, a lot of credit for that nurturing environment goes to the people of the county.

“We have a very multicultural, diverse community that is supportive of the small companies that are the backbone of the business community in Montgomery County,” he said. “It's also a very forward-thinking community with a robust talent pool and a high-achieving school system.”

Sanford said the county is adding one more tool to its belt in the form of its new Accelerating Community Excellence program, known as ACE. The small-business loan program is supported by the state’s casino revenues and has nearly $2M to share with qualifying businesses.

“It's directed to smaller minority business owners, typically those that have been turned down by traditional institutions for lending,” he said. “In Montgomery County, we like to say there's no wrong door to enter when you're a small-business person trying to get economic development assistance.”

To learn more, reach out to MCEDC at connect@thinkmoco.com.

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

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