Hey everyone! Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve officially spun out of ALIVE Media Group. This is a huge milestone for us. As a publication dedicated to telling startup stories, we feel at this moment it’s also important to share our own.

Many of you may know EQ’s origin story, but for those of you who don’t, it started like this.

Two years ago this month, August 2014, our team took the monthly issue of ALIVE to press with a 14-page mega-feature on the St. Louis startup scene. We were taken aback by the response from the St. Louis business community and civic entities, who called to request reprints.

I was blown away by the response, but even more by the realization that there was a true need for more storytelling around the innovation coming out of our region. As a transplant to St. Louis who moved here to go to WashU, I ended up staying in St. Louis and building a small business here, and have experienced the advantages and sometimes challenges of doing so. The gap needed to be filled.

At the same time, we always hoped ALIVE could be a launchpad for new businesses. Along with my partners and team, we formed an internal incubator to explore the opportunities. EQ was a natural fit.

Within a couple of months, we dove into modeling what an ancillary publication could look like. Our team discussed the business model. By March, we had a prototype in hand and met with leaders in the startup community and found early champions in Brian Matthews of Cultivation Capital, Atul Kamra of SixThirty and 10 other partners, who committed sponsorships prior to launch.

On July 1, 2015 we launched EQ online. In November, our first print issue was published.
We’ve published more than 500 stories online this year, go to press on our fourth issue this week and launched a job board earlier this month.

As of today, EQ is officially out of incubation phase and standing on its own. That doesn’t mean that it’s out of startup mode—we have a lot of work ahead and many milestones yet to hit. We look forward to growing and evolving alongside our fellow startups in St. Louis–and to helping grow the ecosystem as we go.

Yours in the hustle –

Kelly