'Finding the winners' for a Cd'A tech boom

It’s become a running family joke.

“When people get confused about what I do for a living,” Nick Smoot said, “my wife (Kenna) and I laugh because if they don’t know, they can’t compete with us.”

Kidding aside, it actually is a bit difficult to understand what the 34-year-old native of the Coeur d’Alene area is trying to accomplish — and particularly what direction Smoot and his various partners might be going.

“I want to identify the ideas and entrepreneurs who will change the world,” Smoot said without even a hint of irony.

And how will he manage such a thing?

Start with the fact that, in one way or another, Smoot is involved with 15 different companies.

“Obviously, some require a lot of my time and effort, and others are in different places in their development,” he said. “I’ve already had some success with a few ventures, and not so much with others.”

The two companies that head the queue for Smoot these days are Innovation Collective LLC, a firm owned by Nick and Kenna alone, and Mountain Man Ventures — which Smoot runs along with Tom Decanio, Rich Thrasher and Charley Cardarelli.

The two companies are complementary, Smoot believes, although a lay person would need a bit of financial instruction to understand how one might feed into the other.

In fact, while Mountain Man is a reasonably straightforward venture capital group that at the moment has $2 million invested in eight companies — all young and offering promise, several right here at home — understanding the Innovation Collective takes some imagination, and certainly a vision of the future.

Smoot’s vision, to be precise.

Perhaps the best way to explain the Innovation Collective’s mission would be to say Smoot is committed to finding the next batch of new and spectacular ideas produced in this era of galloping technology.

But there is a built-in qualifier: The goal is discovering and assisting entrepreneurs and unique thinkers in small and medium-sized cities — most especially Coeur d’Alene — whose ideas can lift the economies of these various communities.

“We don’t have a geographic limitation,” Smoot said, “but we definitely want to see growth and new projects in Coeur d’Alene.”

On the other hand, through various friends and business acquaintances, the Innovation Collective is working as far afield as Lethbridge (Alberta) and Lodi (Italy).

“Our goal is to help these cities reshape their economies through specific types of technology, things that will be needed as we go forward," Smoot said. “For instance, in Coeur d’Alene we’ve chosen to concentrate on robotics and AI (artificial intelligence) because of the area’s solid history of manufacturing.”

Fair enough, but how exactly can that goal be accomplished?

That’s a more complicated answer for the average man or woman on the street, but Smoot can provide anecdotes to explain how he views the future.

“Look, before too long, automation will cause massive loss of jobs among truck drivers,” he said, “so instead of just sitting there and driving across country, these people should be thinking about what will be needed in the future and then try to provide it.”

The Innovation Collective — which has nine staff members in an office on East Sherman Avenue — stands ready to back entrepreneurs and companies Smoot believes will shape the future.

Meanwhile, Smoot and some partners are in the process of developing some new space.

“A company that I’m a partner in is renovating the old Elks building (Fifth Street and Lakeside Avenue) and turning it into the Innovation Den,” Smoot said.

“It will serve as a space for companies to rent small and large offices. It will also be headquarters of Innovation Collective, and a public coffee house with additional event space for conferences and large meetings that contribute to the mission of an innovation economy.”

Meanwhile, here’s a primer from Smoot on how the Collective works …

“We provide assistance with whatever is needed, whether it’s money or knowledge or contacts or anything else," Smoot said. “We can put people together with experts, executives from Facebook or Google or other companies that have been technology leaders. We have unique access to industry leaders.”

To that end, Smoot and the Innovation Collective are hosting a workshop on Feb. 8 at the White House in Coeur d’Alene. The event will feature Chris Vieira, Apple’s development executive for higher education.

“These giant companies are looking everywhere for the next great idea,” Smoot said, explaining some will pay the Innovation Collective for bringing them in contact with potential entrepreneurs.

“A boom can happen here,” he said. “But how do we get Coeur d’Alene to create things of value?

“Believe me, people are looking for it. Apple just spent $100 million on a capital venture. The entire tech industry puts billions into finding ideas for the future.”

At times, Smoot seems to combine practical business models with a vision that sounds almost messianic.

He tosses out terms like “the future of work” and “economic ecosystem” to help the uninitiated grasp a coming landscape that sounds — in Smoot’s words — like part productivity and part philosophy.

One thing is certain: Nick Smoot believes the wave of new ideas in this technological age not only isn’t slowing down, it’s just picking up speed.

“I want to be the guy who helps put those people with the great ideas, the ones who might create massive changes, together with the knowledge and proven expertise that can help things come to fruition," he said. “One study showed that 43 percent of Americans want to be entrepreneurs and that they have ideas they want to fulfill. Obviously, most of them will not succeed in any way that will radically impact society. But there are a few that will.

“You just have to find the winners, and give them the assistance they need to change the world.”