“How do we make sure that we don’t have to duplicate or rewrite the instruction book for every community when we think about shared workspaces, when we think about early funding sources?,” Warner said. “Can we put together a virtual or real backbone … that would have some kind of shared calendar, sharing of funders, sharing of connections between like-minded companies in similar spaces?”

Warner said he was interested in the idea of locating different aspects of a business in different localities.

“If we’re going to get this right for Virginia and the country, you can’t simply have these innovation hubs in the cool places and leave everybody else behind,” he said.

“The idea of how would we put together this backend so we share innovation centers or entrepreneurship centers, how to make sure that’s available for Roanoke and Winchester and Harrisonburg … they’re going to make a lot of the mistakes you guys may have made if we don’t share some of this,” Warner said.

During the discussion, business leaders talked about having similar problems.

Sandy Reisky, president and CEO of Apex Clean Energy, said his company has had an issue with availability of office space in the city.

“We occupy parts of four buildings, including the new operations center, and so consolidating under one spot would be very helpful, and that’s something that we’re working on,” he said.

Deb McMahon, president and CEO of Scitent, said taking on interns creates some drag in her company’s efficiency.

“If we had some funding that we could use to offset that drag, get a few more resources, we can still continue with that efficiency while still giving people an opportunity to learn,” she said.

Supporting diversity efforts in different ways — not only in racial ethnicity or gender, but also in skills — is something she would like to see, McMahon said.

“I have jobs that go from tech support to development to finance. We have just about everything in our company, and I consistently get a very homogeneous group of people that are applying for jobs with me, even though we have done things on our job postings that say, ‘Please apply regardless of your experience,’” she said.

Another important issue is internet access in rural communities because the company has jobs that could be done remotely, but only with high-speed internet access, McMahon said.

Tobias Dengel, CEO of WillowTree, said his largest federal problem is the ability to hire people. He said the company had to open another office in Durham, North Carolina, to hire more people, but they are still having issues filling positions.

“What drives us crazy is we’ve got these incredible kids who are studying at [the University of Virginia], Virginia Tech, we hire on as interns and we cannot keep them because they’re international,” he said. “They either go to large companies because small companies can’t afford the process for the visa program or take the risk that’s projected, but most of them end up going back home, competing with us after we taught them everything and all they want to do is stay here. It’s brutal to see that talent leaving this town every May and all they want to do is stay.”

Mayor Mike Signer, who started the advisory council six months ago, said the goals of the group are to discuss ideas for how the city can best promote the technology ecosystem and creative economy, to share ideas among companies and to better promote the programs the city currently has in place to help businesses.

“Charlottesville, like a lot of cities around the state and around the country, is grappling with two different sides of development,” Signer said. “For every new tech job that’s created, we’re worried about the poverty rate in our city and that endemic problem that goes back generations. For every new development and incubator project that gets launched, we worry about rising property values and the integrity of traditional neighborhoods.”

Signer said an idea that has developed in the meetings so far is that people want to “keep Charlottesville Charlottesville.”

“I think for me, and for a lot of people that have been in the group so far, that means that as we grow and embrace innovation and technology, we are embracing also the unique culture that has made Charlottesville a world-class city already,” he said.