Ling,

Thanks for asking. I moved to the area (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) for a full-time job. When I arrived in the area, I had already been working on several side projects. I connected with who would eventually become my co-founder on Twitter several months after being here.

I got the idea for Startup Chucktown after looking around at the local startup resources and being disappointed that all most all of them only focused on technology startups (a very small portion of the overall startup ecosystem). I wanted to create a platform/resource that would benefit all entrepreneurs and startups regardless of their industry. I toyed around with other names (Holy City Startups and Silicon Harbor Startups) Holy City and Silicon Harbor both being other monikers for the area. I don't agree with "Silicon X" derivatives as they don't really give a unique identity to the area. Startup Chucktown stuck and it became a project to see if me and the new co-founder worked well together.

It seemed like a good partnership and our content started getting noticed (I attribute this to our all inclusive entrepreneurial approach). Since we started more things have sprung up but they still mostly focus on technology. We believe in our product and the responses we get are why we continue to look at ways to improve and adapt our content.

My inspiration is that my startup aspirations span multiple industries: technology, music, food, liquor, writing, physical consumer goods and digital products. We also are targeting 3D printing and open hardware. If all goes well, we also want to open the first all inclusive coworking facility in the area. We want to blend shared office space, a commercial kitchen, 3D printing and open hardware lab as well as a full machine shop. We have large aspirations.