Silver Spring Entrepreneur Envisions a Technology Start-up Utopia right here!

A 2018 article from aitp.org entitled “Tech Town USA: 20 cities IT Pros will want to call Home” sited that several cities throughout the US that have put a great amount of their resources into fostering a strong tech community. One of two on this list stood out the most, #11 DC-Arlington and Alexandria, #16 Baltimore, Columbia and Townson. What!? No Silver Spring, no Montgomery county Maryland? “How could this be?” asked the long time resident and entrepreneur, Ronnie McGaskey. “Silver Spring is a great location with great public schools, highly educated work force, tons of office space, great entertainment/ restaurants and a diverse community. This is Berkley! It could be Silicon Valley.” Recently Montgomery county lost its bid to attract the mega tech giant Amazon, but Ronnie doesn’t see this as a devastating loss by any means. As a matter of fact, he sees this as a great opportunity for the local community and government to help jump start a program that will invest in the local start-ups that are already here and by doing so take our economy to new heights. “Yeah, I get it. The bright shiny new vehicle with all the bells and whistles that Amazon would have offered sounds great although I question how much control of this thing we would have had” says Ronnie. “ve we already have a perfectly fine machine here we just need to put a little work into it.” Mr. McGaskey believes this to be such a fact that he has begun an initiative to bring these companies here. Ronnie has a mission to bring Silver Spring’s first annual Silver Spring for Start-Ups tech meet up this fall where there will a conference on just how to attract these start-ups to this untapped center full of promise. “And with County Executive Marc Elrich support of small business growth and the good fortune of having Silver Spring’s Director of Montgomery County Silver Spring Regional Services, Reemberto Rodriguez serving our community, and with the guidance of community leaders such as Fenton Street Village’s Director of Development, Karen Roper, I feel the sky is the limit” states Ronnie.