I live a few miles outside of New Haven, Connecticut.

My office and studio where I conduct business could not be any closer to the heartbeat of New Haven, the New Haven Green. We are feet from city hall and can walk to any New Haven attraction worth mentioning.

As far as the New Haven entrepreneurial scene goes, I like to think I’m on the playing field.

New Haven is an interesting city with many of the rudiments of what comprises a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem.

We’ve got inexpensive office space and technical talent. There’s some money around. We have co-working spaces, like the Grove*, where actual companies have incubated, grown and matured. We have university support. We’ve got an ethereal “cool” factor that draws in recent college grads who seem to be absent throughout the rest of the state.

We’ve even got what local entrepreneur, creative and leader Matt Fantasic called the “creative weirdos.” These are the multi-tattooed designers, musicians, and creative grunt workers who are an important catalyst in any contemporary, growing, business environment.

We have easy connections via train to two of the biggest entrepreneurial communities in the world. At least weekly, I’ll take the train to NYC for an entrepreneurial or tech event and sleep in my own bed back home that night.

In other words we have all the ingredients.

What we’re lacking, I’m afraid, is a cogent plan to coalesce all of these important individual ingredients in to a cohesive, working, growing entrepreneurial machine.

And, we have problems. Boy, do we have problems.

Problem One: We Have the Wrong Leaders

Most community builders, and many entrepreneurs, are familiar with the work of Brad Feld, a venture capitalist in Boulder, Colorado. Feld notes a dichotomy between leaders and feeders. Feeders are all the folks who, in theory, should be supporting an entrepreneurial ecosystem — investors, attorneys, the government. Leaders are the entrepreneurs themselves. Leaders and feeders each have a role in the success of an entrepreneurial community, according to Feld.

But, “the entrepreneurs need to be leaders.”

While many around New Haven, and the larger Connecticut entrepreneurial ecosystem have lauded Feld’s work, the seem to ignore where leadership should come from. REAL entrepreneurs.

There is a vacuum in leadership because not many legitimate “been there, done that” entrepreneurs have stepped up. Entrepreneurs who’ve built companies that have become successful (as measured by financial impact and jobs created) are a critical factor in any ecosystem.

David Salinas, founder and developer of the District, provides a model for exactly the type of profile we need to see more of. After successfully building Digital Surgeons, David turned his attention to the community and wanted to do something big.

When you don’t have sufficient entrepreneurial leadership, something else fills the vacuum. Locally, that seems to be government. The well intentioned, but critically underfunded state-run Innovation Places program is an example. There are definitely positives in the program, but, it’s effectiveness is marred by massive under funding, infighting over limited resources, and a bureaucratic process for selecting programs to be funded that no one is happy with.

Recently New Haven’s iteration of the Innovation Places program the Elm City Innovation Collaborative held a celebration to introduce the ECIC funded programs to the public. These programs all have a brief fiscal horizon before they will have to apply again for funding — Not nearly enough to time to achieve real traction. To justify their existence they’ll ultimately use vanity metrics — measurements that sound good, but, don’t measure the actual entrepreneurial ecosystem growth we need to achieve.

The bigger problem is that the amount of money distributed to ECIC for the whole city of New Haven is meager. Around $2 million is distributed among multiple ECIC members. It would take around ten times that to truly move the needle.

Real entrepreneurs in the lead means that we have actual people taking risks with their own money. Vanity metrics are unacceptable and the ultimate goal of successful growth becomes primary, instead of justifying the next round of funding which is always just months away.

Personally, I’ve sponsored everything from The CT Entrepreneur Awards to college hackathons — with my own money. This was modeled by my own mentors from my time in Austin. If you’ve benefited from entrepreneurship, you give back. You buy the pizza.

Problem Two: We Compete Instead of Collaborate

Strong ecosystems are the result of collaboration among entrepreneurial leaders and organizations. The leaders and feeders work together towards common goals that benefit the entire ecosystem. I find that Connecticut, in general, finds ecosystem participants competing more than they are collaborating.

They compete for limited funds. For example, the successful funding of one organization in ECIC might be detrimental to the funding of another. You can’t expect people to work together when the successful funding of their organization might be dependent on the failure to fund another.

I’ve observed not just competition in fiscal concerns, but also a competition for “credit.”

Everyone wants to be the one who “solved” the problem and wants credit for success we’ve had so far — and to distance themselves from failure. Concerning yourself with “credit” versus results is another strong inhibitor to proper collaboration.

Problem Three: We Confuse Community Development with Economic Development

Well executed economic development activity results in jobs, tax revenue, density and the financial success of a community.

Well executed community development is a complex combination of social, economic, educational and recreational factors that makes someplace worth living.

New Haven (and the state overall) needs both. Both economic and community development are part of the formula for success. But they are not the same thing. Economic and community development need to occur in parallel.

We constantly earmark funds for economic development to see the effort include what are, essentially, social programs. Don’t get me wrong — I am a huge proponent of social programs, from the social safety net, to education, to development. I simply don’t confuse social programs and economic development. (I will certainly concede there is some overlap between the two areas — just like there is overlap with education or zoning).

Economic development programs need a laser-like focus on activity that helps companies grow, move to New Haven, or increase the economic activity of companies here.

I’d be thrilled if the Y built a new start-of-the-art downtown facility. I’d probably even join.

I’d also be thrilled if Square 9 decided to double their office space and New Haven staff.

Both of these events would be positive important events in New Haven, but, only one is true economic development.

Let’s make sure our development efforts are targeted to the right places.

Problem Four: We Consider Wantapreneurship and Entrepreneurship Equal

This is also a statewide problem.

Because we have so few visible successful entrepreneurs, we feature, honor, and exemplify ideas and companies that are so nascent that they are not only prerevenue, but precompany.

I don’t think startups shouldn’t be featured, but, we need to tell the entire story — successes, failures, those at the very beginning and those at some type of end.

The overwhelming majority of entrepreneurial organizations fail. In some ecosystems failure is celebrated as a step towards success. Because we seem to overvalue startups and undervalue companies that have revenue, staff and tax payments, we have inadvertently created a culture of wantapreneurship. If someone with an idea — and no proof of concept can be rewarded with everything from press coverage to cash for an untested idea, we cultivate wantapreneurs, and not much else.

I know of one company in Connecticut that I assumed successful from all the press coverage and “buzz” they received from the feeders in the entrepreneurial community. I was in a position recently to peek at their financials. Vanity metrics run amuck…

In five years a full seventy-five percent of their revenue had come from entrepreneurial contests and awards. In reality, they were hardly selling anything.

I am embarrassed to say that in an entrepreneur awards event I was judging, the panel gave them a $10,000 award.

Funding yourself with entrepreneurial awards for years while selling nothing is the definition of wantapreneurship.

Towards a More Cohesive Tomorrow

Yes, we have problems.

But none of these problems are intractable. We can find experienced entrepreneurs to stand up and lead. We can learn to play nice in the sandbox and collaborate better. We can learn how to work with and grow Stage II companies and stop worshipping at the alter of startups. We can separate and focus our community and economic development efforts.

We, can.

But, I’m not sure if we will.

*Growing companies like recdesk and Spheregen incubated at the Grove, among others.

If you’re in the New Haven area and part of the start-up community, Id like to invite you to the Great New Haven Sticker Swap on May 4. We’ll be swapping company stickers and introductions over lunch. Register here. Your team is invited.

Yes, I am buying the pizza.