It’s a Wonderful Ecosystem

by Eric Parker

Do you ever imagine what the world would look like without ecosystem builders?

I do.

And when I let myself go there, it is unsettling.

I often question my own sanity. Is it delusional to believe that change can be driven from the bottom up? At this point, we cannot really shout any louder about the importance of startups for the health of our economies and communities. Statements about shifting from generational poverty to generational wealth feel like mantras we repeat to reassure ourselves and renew our faith in the mission. We preach the virtues of customers before capital, yet internally wonder whether that is the voice of wisdom or defeat.

Every quarter, I see at least one startup we have coached toward revenue get blindsided by a venture-backed play. Forced to defend their position with a bootstrapped team of two or three against a company with ten to twenty engineers and a fully staffed marketing machine. It is painful, because these founders are doing everything right. They follow the advice we give them. And yet the market does not always reward what is right. Sometimes it rewards whoever is best resourced.

It happens at the ecosystem level, too. How many independent ESOs have you watched close in the last decade? Meanwhile, top-down institutions have become increasingly adept at clothing themselves in ecosystem language like collaboration, capacity building, and community-driven innovation, while starving the actual builders of the resources required to do the work.

We are in a fight for the soul of a nation, if not humanity itself. And yet this is what makes ecosystem builders unique. We may be the last ones holding faithful to the idea in decentralized mass collaboration. We may be the only ones who understand that entrepreneurship is the path that shifts power away from the few and toward the many.

And that is why I want to imagine, if only for a moment, what the world would look like without you.

Because the absence reveals the value.

Across our communities, people have slowly given up on imagining that their lives could look different. In that world, your favorite entrepreneur never lets their idea leave their mind. They do not share it, explore it, or test it. They never imagine they have permission to do anything other than fit into whatever role the system already assigned them.

Without ecosystem builders, cities like Boulder and Tulsa would never have become the startup communities we know today. The spark that proved small cities can be global innovation hubs would never have ignited. Places like Reno, Shenandoah Valley, Augusta, or Des Moines would never have discovered their own capacity to create. They would still be waiting for solutions to arrive from somewhere else. The belief that innovation can come from any city, any neighborhood, or any person would not exist. It would be a country where power concentrates in a few predictable places and everyone else becomes an audience rather than a participant.

If we are lucky, that world would feel provincial. More likely, it would feel feudal.

But that is not the world we live in.

Why?

Because you showed up.

Because you showed up, the national story of innovation expanded beyond three coastal cities. Small communities discovered they could build their own future instead of inheriting someone else’s. The map of where possibility lives widened because you made room for people who had never been invited into entrepreneurship before.

Because you showed up, economic development changed course. Cities began to invest in cultivation rather than recruitment. Policymakers started to see founders as part of the workforce system rather than an outlier to it. Institutions that once operated in silos learned to speak to each other because you were standing in the space between them, translating what each one needed to hear.

Because you showed up, underestimated entrepreneurs finally heard, “Yes, you belong here.” You helped change the assumptions about who can be a founder, who deserves support, and whose ideas matter. You created programs, pathways, and permission in places where none existed, and by doing so, you shifted the trajectory of entire communities.

Because you showed up, the people in your community believe in a path to co-create a shared future where every person has a place of value, dignity, and purpose. You kept imagination alive. You kept agency alive. You kept possibility alive.

Thank you for sharing the permission slip to dream.

#bethenode