Having a great plan is a critical element of success in economic development, or basically any endeavor. But so too is being flexible and taking a chance on something that wasn’t exactly in the plan. That’s what happened almost exactly two years ago. My then colleague Andrew Ngui, based on a friendship he had formed years earlier, was asked to make a presentation about Peoria to a group of fifteen Brazilian startups visiting Chicago. Andrew was unable to go, but I decided it was worth a shot so I drove to Chicago, made my pitch about what a great community we had in Peoria (and had to explain to these foreign visitors where Peoria was), and went on my way. I didn’t expect – I didn’t plan – on that fifteen minutes being so fruitful.
The impact was nearly immediate. The next day, I got a call from one of the delegation organizers that a group of four startups wanted to visit Peoria – at the end of that week! We quickly cleared the calendar and set up some meetings for our guests. The following week a fifth Brazilian startup founder visited. So impressed by what he saw, he returned in early 2023 with his wife and son to better understand Central Illinois through both a business and personal lens. That guy, the amazing Alexandre Chequim of DigiFarmz, ended up establishing his first US office in PeoriaNEXT later in 2023.
Fast forward about a year, and I received an email from Reginaldo Rodrigues, one of the guys who visited Peoria in November 2022. He remembered how helpful we had been and wanted to connect me to Claudio Goldbach, the organizer of an upcoming Brazilian delegation of startups, business leaders, and institutional partners to Illinois in the summer of 2024. A few months later we were playing host to 33 new friends, showing off the amazing assets of Greater Peoria. We organized an agricultural discussion at Stewart Family Farms, visited Morton Industries and the Ag Lab, hosted a reception at the Peoria Riverfront Museum, and threw them a going-away party at Wildlife Prairie Park. We also connected Brazilian and Peoria startups and supporters at Distillery Labs, an event that looks like it will create at least one lucrative partnership between the two companies.
Given the budding relationship between Peoria and Brazil, the next logical step is for us to visit them. As anyone in business development will tell you, relationships matter. There are already some great Peoria-Brazil connections. Caterpillar has a factory in Piracicaba outside of Sao Paolo. Bradley University is a hotbed of connections, particularly within its Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. But you only build relationships in person. In early November, Doug Cruitt of Distillery Labs and I ventured south – way south – to build on the momentum. Over the course of five days (plus two travel days on either side), we traveled over 15,000 air miles on 10 different airplanes to visit companies and institutions in four different Brazilian cities: Florianopolis, Porto Alegre, Cuiaba, and Sao Paolo.
In each city, our agenda was organized by a Brazilian partner who had already visited Peoria and shared our optimism about the value of these relationships. I sort of lost count, but we had to have met over 50 people: startup founders, company executives, researchers, program managers, entrepreneurship ecosystem leaders. We heard pitches from startups and explored ways to connect them with potential customers in Central Illinois. We started working on building formal partnerships with incubators like Caldiera in Porto Alegre and AgriHub in Cuiaba that will allow the sharing of opportunities and resources between our communities. Just as importantly, we learned about the Brazilian model of entrepreneurial ecosystem building, one that is built on mutual support, resource sharing and true cooperation even among competitors. It was an amazing trip, and in my nearly 20 years of work in economic development maybe the most impactful thing.
So what comes next? We have all committed – both our Peoria partners and those in Brazil – to keep this partnership alive. I have been working to identify opportunities to connect the startups I met with opportunities in Central Illinois, because the best way to get a company to locate in your community is to help them find a customer. Through the consulate in Chicago, the organizers of the delegation that visited us this summer are planning another trip for mid-2025.
And we are planning our own return trip, potentially to attend South Summit, the largest convention of startups in South America being held in Porto Alegre this spring.
An economic development organization is charged with a broad mission to improve our local economy. One of the elements of that work is business attraction. But most think of that as landing a big factory in the region. That work is important, too, and not an area we are abandoning. However, we believe that Greater Peoria can be the home to companies from across the world, both big and small. With assets like Distillery Labs and Peoria Next, partners like Bradley University and the Illinois Innovation Network, and all of the great qualities of Greater Peoria, we know we can turn these emerging relationships into measurable impact.