Leadership in the Global community with a focus on People, Business and Technology.

Startech International Services

It doesn’t make any difference if you are a women with red dress small community, a town or city, a large metro area, a state or a country, there are only three ways that anyone can use to spur economic development:

  1.      growing new businesses organically
  2.      attracting new businesses to move into the area, or
  3.      retaining and expanding existing business.

Startech focuses its expertise on using new technologies to create and grow new business in all three.  Each one of these avenues requires a deep understanding of the clients environment and a broad knowledge of technologies that can be applied successfully in the clients ecosystem to create economic growth.  We have a long and successful track record of creating technology companies.

 

Startech International exists to apply innovation and technology to create new industries for our clients.

The leadership of Startech has extensive global experience.  The leadership credentials include

  • executive leadership in Fortune 100 companies on three continents,
  • managing major US divisions for foreign owned corporations,
  • leading very profitable multi-billion dollar P&Ls,
  • global operating experience
  • multi-lingual,
  • starting a new enterprise and growing it to over $100M in sales,
  • raising over $300m in equity financing, and
  • much more.

The leadership admits they have “been there, done that, and have the scars and the grey hair to prove it”.

Startech International provides assistance to cities, counties, states, republics and countries in the creation, development and implementation of their innovation and technology based economic development strategy.  Results, counseling and coaching include:

  • identification of new technologies suitable for introduction into a client area;
  • assisting clients evaluate the economic potential of new technologies;
  • assistance in the evaluation, creation and implementation of technology based economic development strategies;
  • assistance in creating the proper framework upon which to build the economic development machine;
  • assistance with the creation and delivery of an effective investor environment;
  • evaluation of university and local technology resources and how to craft them into a differentiated economic product offering;
  • assistance and advice with commercialization plans;
  • working with regional universities to encourage “spin-outs” of private companies utilizing Intellectual Property and assets developed at an Institution of Higher Education;
  • assistance with research and development activities geared to prove the feasibility of an idea;
  • focus the energy of entrepreneurs in the commercialization of the results of research and development;
  • working with incubators for new start-up businesses;
  • working with existing businesses related to research, development, and expansion;
  • training of entrepreneurs, economic developers, educators and others on the reality of new business venture creation

The success of all of these services, led by Startech, but always performed in collaboration with the client, transfers the knowledge, skills and programs necessary to create businesses and industries.

Let Startech International supercharge your economic development program using sustainable technology leadership that is geared to provide benefits for the long term.

History

Startech Foundation, originally known as SATAI, began in 1999 as a grassroots community effort to develop the San Antonio technology economy.

Key community figures, politicians, and business leaders recognized the need for long-term, sustained growth of the technology community and the need to leverage the region’s strengths. The City of San Antonio, academia, and industry joined forces around the common goals of collaboration and communication that fostered an accelerated development of the technology industry sector.

Startech Foundation was a private Texas corporation recognized as a not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) by the US Internal Revenue Service. The charter of Startech Foundation states it is “operated exclusively for… charitable, scientific, literary or educational purposes.” It played a key role in the development and implementation of initiatives that further the entrepreneurial environment and the opportunities produced by a vigorous technology economy.

Since 2003, Startech has assisted its clients in raising more than $315M in equity funding from a wide variety of sources. Startech is known as a benchmark of collaboration. Any regional economic ecosystem is composed of many many critical, synergistic, collaborative, and sometimes competitive components.

Startech Foundation, as a not-for-profit, served as a collaborative and supportive group, not to replicate these components, but collaborate to insure that all of the key ones are present, vibrant and growing. The board of Startech Foundation decided to wind up operations in early 2013.

Star Tech International is a private for-profit Texas corporation. The for-profit corporation has a charter that enables it to include an expanded mission. This provides Star Tech International with the freedom to engage clients around the US and the world in an unencumbered manner. The operational leadership remains the same.

women with pink hat

Leadership

The leadership of Star Tech has extensive global experience. 

The leadership credentials include having executive leadership in Fortune 100 companies on three continents, managing major US divisions for foreign-owned corporations, leading very profitable multibillion dollar P&Ls, multi-lingual, starting a new enterprise and growing it to over $100M in sales, raising over $300M in equity financing, and much more. 

The principal consultants admit that they have “been there, done that, and have the scars and the grey hair to prove it.”

Short Bio

Long Bio

President’s Message

You will agree that the world changes in ways and at a speed you never thought possible, even a few years ago.  Likewise, our participation in it must change.

Life for me started on the family ranch in Wyoming.  It was over 22 miles from one end of the ranch to the other.  Working on horseback caring for the livestock through deep snowdrifts, delivering calves in sub-freezing temperatures, getting them to water and lower elevations in the heat of the summer, while watching out for the rattlesnakes gives one a perspective of how precious life is.  Watching out and helping your family and fellow ranchers was a normal part of life as was caring for the horse you rode every day.  In that vast land you learn quickly that those people, those ranchers, that horse will save your life sometime before the year is over.  Truth, honesty and ethics have their roots here.  It was a fascinating framework for my life.

Life of any type is precious and works, lives, grows, survives in many different ways.  All are to be admired, understood, cared for, helped if you can.  It was a long journey from there learning in a two room schoolhouse heated by a wood stove, to leading wordwide organizations with operations in almost every country in the world.

Similarly, living and working on a world stage for most of my life has provided me with additional fascinating framework to live on.  Living and working on three different continents, and having leadership roles in organizations with outstanding support of more cultures than can be counted.

I was fortunate to closely interact with and learn from cultures with vastly different foundations than my own.  This came from extensive experience and success operating in applied technology arenas in world markets having worked and lived in the USA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Singapore for extended periods of time.

Global clients helped me to learn how to create, implement and/or grow technology based sectors within the clients existing home economy. This includes work on creating defensible global technology strategies, identifying long term sector goals, determining the mix and timing of investments, acquisitions and organic technology development, sourcing intellectual property and applied technology, and workforce development.

Later my focus turned toward corporate restructuring, turnarounds, Venture Capital sponsored special projects and Board of Director participation. These projects include those necessitated by Merger and Acquisition, downsizing, product end of life, buyouts, management restructuring, market shifts and market disinter-mediation. Projects have also included non profit corporations and associations experiencing declining membership and revenues. Startech engagements of this type typically have a fixed duration as Startech has no desire for a long term role in the ongoing operation.

I have been on the Board of Directors of a large variety of public and private corporations, both large and small.

A wise friend and mentor recently said to me.
“You spend the first part of your life working with people, developing your skills,
and the last part of it, giving them back”[1].

I reminded him of that after he cleaned my clock playing poker.  He said “next time”.

But on that “giving back” note, the gnarly business of Human Trafficking is on my radar.  Human Trafficking has numerous tenacles in the crime industry.  Little attention is paid to the international recruitment side of this business.  I work freely in the global landscape and so spend ever increasing time on this facet of world life to try to do some good.

We hope you find this website helpful and informative.

James B. Poage
President
Startech International LTD

[1] Guy Clumpner, HOLT Cat