Yesterday, the TBJ held a “State of RTP” press event. Leaders of RTP and tenant companies talked in this summit about how they want to evolve their business model to meet thee needs of 2021’s businesses and what they can do about it.
You’d think TBJ’ own journalists would only try to hype up the event. But surprisingly, it brought up surprisingly important points about what challenges lie ahead for RTP in its next 50 years -and in some cases, Raleigh and the whole Triangle, too.
From these TBJ articles (Article 1 | Article 2):
1. The Triangle is lacking in risk capital, including venture capital.
Startups, especially in biotech, need a lot of upfront investments. The NSF, NIH, and DARPA fund a lot of tech development, but companies still need to be formed and have initial investments before they’re ready to hit the markets. The Triangle is lacking in this regard, according to them and other research.
RTP’s leaders said this is a big drawback against more businesses starting in our region or calling it home. The 3D printing company Carbon and NFT platform Mojito are two successful startups I can think off the top of my head that moved out of the Triangle for funding rounds, so it’s definitely not a hypothetical question. It’s not to say there’s no VC funding here since there are several options for early-stage funding, options for affiliates for UNC, Duke, and State, and tons of resources when you need business advice. But when you need large or later-stage investments, it’s not that simple.
Personally, I wouldn’t just say it’s venture capital funds that are missing in the Triangle, but it’s the amount of risk-taking tolerated or encouraged in general. After all, many people end up moving to the Triangle with an established career to raise a family. Doesn’t that stage of life just fundamentally make you more risk-averse since you need to “think of the kids”? I wonder if there’s a psychological impact from things like that on risk-taking activities like making a startup.
2. The Triangle doesn't think or plan as a region.
We talked about this earlier in the elections/council thread in the context of whether it’s okay for Durham-based religion-leading housing advocates in OneWake to do what they do in Wake County. I still need to process my thoughts on that, but it’s clear that we aren’t the only ones who recognize the Triangle is still very siloed based on its individual cities and counties.
@Francisco mentioned in the above link that Amazon may have had a discouraging headache from how it had to calm down Durham after it awarded “Raleigh” as a HQ2 finalist. I’m not sure how true that was, but it is true that we only have so much coordination between the governments, cultures, and identities of our region.
I mentioned some possible solutions in the commuter rail thread. Maybe there’s other ways we could share planning policies, too? For example, Triangle cities could pitch in and have one shared design guideline for “missing middle” houses, a joint plan for affordable houses, or engineering standards for safer and more walkable streets. We have an existing place to start, too, in the form of the Triangle J Council of Governments.
3. RTP's running out of empty land, but density runs against its selling point.
Speaking of land use planning, we’re obviously about density here in the DTRaleigh Community. But big companies, especially in the tech and bio worlds, are sensitive about privacy and intellectual property protection. RTP seems to think it will need a better way to figure out how to navigate this changing landscape of corporate needs.
To be clear, suburban offices don’t seem to be dying without a fight despite quite a lot of articles saying otherwise. But I wonder what RTP will actually do about that conflict next -beyond what it has in store for Hub RTP and the Frontier?
One more thing to note: if the future really is leaning towards dense, walkable places with urban-style mixed-use buildings, then this means Raleigh (and especially downtown!) may have a business case for competing against RTP as a business hub. I’m not sure if that would lead to the helpful, mutually-improving kind of competition or the type of competition where both sides cannibalize each other’s markets, though…
Do these sound right to you? How do y’all feel about that?