Category: Kitsap Business

By connecting commercial innovators with naval defense, Kitsap is demonstrating how regional innovation can strengthen both national security and economic growth.

Last month, standing before a room of business, government, and community leaders from Bainbridge Island and across the Kitsap Peninsula, I asked a question: As we look to the future, what do we want Kitsap to be known for?

One year ago this month, we celebrated the graduation celebration of the 2025 Matchstick Lab Micro Business Accelerator cohort, a program that brought together 24 groundbreakers in the Kitsap community and invested heavily in the growth and development of the next iteration of Kitsap businesses.

It’s no longer enough to focus only on helping businesses strengthen their fundamentals. We also need to strengthen the ecosystem around them: access to capital, pathways to growth, and a community that believes entrepreneurship matters.

Every leader I work with wants the same thing: an organization that thrives no matter what comes next. Whether pursuing growth, recovering from setbacks, developing new capabilities, or building future-readiness, they all seek sustainable resilience that doesn’t crack under pressure.

The future of a resilient startup community in Kitsap County won’t be shaped by who raises the most money—it’ll be shaped by who builds the strongest culture. Capital and talent may be easier to measure, but they’re not what holds a place together when things get hard and a start-up falters.

Entrepreneurship is often framed as a solo pursuit—visionary leaders, bold risks, and long hours spent building something from nothing. But beneath every sustainable business is something less often talked about and just as critical: community.

To have a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, we need talent, density, culture, capital, and a supportive regulatory environment. These depend on people to activate it, and the Call Forward in 2025 came out of an energizing day with inspiring ideas.

When my co-founders and I started Phaidra at the end of 2019, we looked at a map and, like typical engineers, built a matrix to determine where to live.  Our criteria included tax rates, talent availability, proximity to customers and venture capital, the strength of the startup ecosystem, and affordability.