Joel Kissel experienced the usual growing pains of a start-up company, namely, where to find money and clients.

“You tend to get bogged down in the process as opposed to being proactive and idea driven – the whole reason you got into it,” he said. “If you’re looking at jumping off the edge, it sure would be nice to see some people in the water waiting for you, as opposed to the bodies at the bottom of the pool.”

Just months after forming his sports marketing company, TKO Marketing, Kissell is soaking up the shared experiences of his peers through the newly formed Iowa Entrepreneur’s Coalition, a group that plans to not only provide resources to entrepreneurs such as Kissell, but also pave the way for business people with fresh ideas.

“The thing that I’ve taken most from it is just the fact that I’m not alone,” Kissell said. “That is just amazingly comforting. Even though you’re in this alone or with partners, your business is on your own. So you can affiliate your business and yourself with other people that are moving down the same path and at the same time pool your resources and reap the benefits for your business and yourself.”

The IEC has grown to include more than 100 entrepreneurs from across the state. The group has held monthly meetings since March and has most recently formed committees to address marketing, communication, policy and advocacy.

Kathryn Dickel and Heather Hansen, initiators of the IEC and partners in Swaelu Media and IowaTix.com, said that in addition to serving as advocates for entrepreneurs, members want to come together to share advice and resources and provide a support system. The group has have garnered the support of experienced entrepreneurs who can serve in mentorship roles, as well as economic development leaders and legislators who can build support at the state level for changes in policy.

When starting Swaelu Media, Dickel and Hansen spent months in search of loans, grants and other sources of financing, then awaited their first project. They found deficiencies in programs for entrepreneurs, and faced a widespread bias from companies who were reluctant to turn a project over to a company that had no experience.

“That, in a nutshell, is the kind of atmosphere that’s out there for the entrepreneur,” Dickel said. “Most of those people are middle managers at big companies, and they’re not going to take the risk on a company that hasn’t been around, and we certainly understand that. So the idea is how are we going to mitigate their risk?”

To answer that question, the IEC has proposed that the state create the Iowa Entrepreneurial Institute to provide professional training to Iowa entrepreneurs through a combination of programs from the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Centers and the Iowa Small Business Development Centers.

But the Iowa Entrepreneurial Institute is just one of several recommendations the Coalition has made to strengthen Iowa-based businesses and the state’s entrepreneurial environment. Other recommendations include financial incentives for start-ups in the form of tax credits or assistance in paying off college loans and the creation of a health-care plan for entrepreneurs, a hurdle that often is a main deterrent in the start-up phase.

“If what I’ve seen is any indication, this is going to be a multiyear process, certainly in terms of seeing some of these things happen,” Dickel said. “These are not just for the government, but ideas that can be built through the private sector, and initiatives that would come out of our coalition.”

She said one of the biggest problems Iowa entrepreneurs face is the lack of a streamlined means to access resources, and the ability to access those resources. Entrepreneurs spend more time finding resources than operating their businesses, she said, which slows growth for the entrepreneur and the community.

“All the resources seem pretty fragmented and spread out,” Kissell said. “They’re all there, you just have to look under specific rocks to find them, as opposed to them being out in the open. There are secret knocks and handshakes all over.”

Jason Kocienski ran into those roadblocks at Source Allies Inc., which he joined 16 months ago as a partner while the software development company was in the start-up phase. As a father of three, he appreciates Iowa’s family focus, but needs more than that to commit to staying in the state.

“As a family man, I’m looking for Iowa as an entrepreneurial atmosphere to grow, where it’s exciting to stay, and still maintain the family atmosphere,” he said.

He moved to Des Moines several years ago from Austin, Texas, considered a prime location for young entrepreneurs. Though Des Moines is not considered high in the rankings of top entrepreneurial communities, Kocienski sees its potential and sees the IEC as a vehicle for change.

“Downtown Des Moines has great infrastructure, a lot of talent, so why isn’t it up there in those ranks?” asked Kocienski. “So I started to look at what I could do and what others were doing out there. It’s more about what we can do for the entrepreneur.”

The coalition’s ultimate goal is to see a substantial increase in healthy Iowa-born businesses, such as Source Allies. But the focus of state government, members say, has been to support large, out-of-state businesses through programs such as the Grow Iowa Values Fund. They suggest the state expand its definition of a successful, growing business and look to more direct entrepreneurial funding. They suggest tax credits to entrepreneurs, or financial assistance to graduates of Iowa colleges and universities who have started a business in the state.

“If you build your home-grown businesses that have made a commitment to Iowa because they made a commitment to Iowa, not because of a fat (economic) package, you’re going to have a solid base that’s going to stay here and keep hiring Iowa people,” Dickel said. “That’s the kind of people and businesses that we want to see.”

The Entrepreneur State?

The Iowa Entrepreneur’s Coalition has set forth a set of recommendations that it hopes will set Iowa on the path toward becoming The Entrepreneur State. With a collective voice of passionate entrepreneurs, coalition leaders say change is possible.

But the state apparently has a long way to go, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s annual Small Business Survival Index, which seeks to expose “whether state and local governments turn out to be a plus or minus when it comes to entrepreneurial decision making.”

The index routinely places Iowa in the lower tier of states when ranked according to policy environments for entrepreneurs. Iowa was ranked 43rd in the nation in 2004, the ninth year of the index, down from 41st in 2003. For individual category rankings, Iowa was ranked as high as ninth for workers’ compensation premiums and as low as 49th for top corporate income tax rates.