John Moore and the business of getting people to talk

At the lunches John Moore organized for entrepreneurs, the useful action could happen off to the side. Someone would pull another founder away for a conversation about a partnership, an idea or a coffee. Moore watched for those exchanges. The scheduled discussion had brought people together; the unscheduled ones suggested they had a reason to come back.

He called these encounters “sideboards.” It was an unusually modest measure for an economic development effort. No ceremonial scissors required. A city hoping to grow companies could start by making it easier for the people running them to talk.

Moore helped create NEXT in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2006. Later renamed NextGEN, it became a support network with workspaces, mentoring and connections to capital. His route there included leaving Coca-Cola’s global headquarters in 1999 to open smoothie bars in his hometown, followed by work at the Greenville Chamber. The question behind NEXT concerned better jobs and a more prosperous local economy.

“Innovation is a contact sport.”John Moore

The organization needed a business plan, too

By January 2015, Moore was calling the organization’s next phase NEXT 3.0. The name sounded like a software release. The changes involved matters familiar to anyone running an actual business: staff, governance, funding and the ability to make a decision without an expedition through several committees.

He had previously divided his time between NEXT and the Chamber. Additional funding let him become NEXT’s full-time CEO in 2014. NEXT then became a separate limited liability company owned by the Chamber, with its own bank account and board. Moore went from reporting to three boards to answering to one.

That detail deserves a moment. An organization helping founders move quickly has its own capacity to get stuck. Simplifying responsibility was part of making the service work. The board structure also reserved its chair for a NEXT entrepreneur, keeping a business founder inside the machinery of oversight.

Brenda Laakso, NEXT’s vice president, was another part of the organization’s development. Moore’s account of its stages put bringing her on as a full-time staff member before the more elaborate changes. Networks need people whose job includes answering tomorrow’s call. For a founder seeking help, continuity has a plain value: the next question can build on the last conversation. Staff carry that knowledge between the events people remember and the ordinary working days that follow.

A startup sometimes needs a loading dock

The manufacturing center offered a rather literal test of whether NEXT was listening. Some companies needed more space than a garage could provide, while owning a building was still a stretch. An office with good coffee would leave a fairly large problem unsolved: where, exactly, should the machinery go?

Companies outside the Innovation Center were asking about facilities with practical features such as loading docks. Moore looked around Greenville County for possibilities. Developers Dennis and Russ Braasch were working on a property at 400 Birnie Street, and the proposed NEXT Manufacturing Center took shape around a shared-space approach for growing manufacturers.

“In a way, all we do with NEXT is find out what these companies need,” Moore said.

That sentence gives the project its scale. The starting point was demand from businesses already operating locally. A facility could then answer a specific constraint on their growth. Even the familiar startup image of the garage acquires a less romantic sequel: sooner or later, someone has to receive a delivery.

Getting investors to make the trip

Space was only one constraint. Access to investment required another kind of construction, involving invitations, introductions and enough time together for an investor to understand a company.

In 2015, NEXT’s Venture Capital Weekend combined company visits and business meetings with Greenville’s cultural offerings during the Euphoria festival. By then, the event was in its fifth year. Moore had taken over its operation from the city after the first. He credited city planning and development manager Michael Kerski with the idea.

The approach treated Greenville itself as part of the introduction. Visitors could see facilities, meet entrepreneurs and experience the place where those businesses were growing. For a founder, a promising company and an accessible investor are two different things. Bringing the investor into town shortened that distance.

Moore described earlier weekends producing investments and visitors discovering companies they wished they had encountered sooner. It was a practical argument for hospitality. A meal cannot do an investor’s diligence, but it can help get the conversation onto the calendar.

Reports of retirement were premature

Moore’s departure from NEXT came in July 2019. His resignation took effect on July 26, after more than four years as president and CEO and 16 years with the Greenville Chamber. He and his wife planned to step away from their careers for travel and volunteer work, then return to Greenville.

By his departure, the organization had expanded to three facilities: NEXT Innovation Center, NEXT on Main and NEXT Manufacturing. It supported roughly 200 entrepreneurs annually. Those were the results of an organization and a wider community, with Moore helping coordinate its people and pieces.

The break did not become a permanent departure from work. In an October 2021 LinkedIn post, he addressed retirement rumors directly. He and his wife Lucynda had taken several months away in 2019; both were back at work. He said he had launched Momenteum Strategies about 18 months earlier and had already worked with seven client organizations or communities across three states.

The new practice let him take a locally developed body of experience into other places. A person can leave an executive position while remaining occupied by the same question that made the job interesting.

Greenville, meet Shakopee

One of those places was Shakopee, Minnesota. When the city launched an effort to grow innovative businesses in 2021, Kerski reached out to Moore. They had worked together on NEXT in Greenville. An old working relationship became a way to start something in a new setting.

The Shakopee effort drew on existing local programs, including Scott County’s First Stop Shop and its Fast-Track Challenge. The network brought together startups and more established businesses. Its shared qualification was the combination of innovation and potential for growth, allowing it to cross the boundaries of a single industry.

That breadth matters to the story. An entrepreneur network built around what its members need can include people whose products look nothing alike. A manufacturing founder and a software founder may still recognize the difficulty of hiring, selling or deciding when to expand.

Moore’s work at Momenteum also includes advising communities nearer home. GrowCo founding entrepreneur and board chair Matt Vaadi describes his help with benchmarking, understanding founders’ priorities and advising its executive director in Columbia. The assignment starts with learning who is there and what would help them.

What survives the ribbon cutting

Moore has another way of continuing these conversations: writing. His recurring column, Moore to the Point, returns to the decisions facing founders and the communities that hope to support them. The title permits a pun. The subjects generally require patience.

In March 2024, he argued for the value of a founder’s peer network. Convening people requires more care than sending an invitation and finding a speaker. His emphasis was on assembling an appropriate group, then developing trust and participation over time. A confidential exchange has a different usefulness from a public performance.

In February 2025, he described three parts of the ecosystem builder’s job: connecting people, aligning institutions around a shared direction, and balancing present action with longer planning. Universities, established businesses and local governments all enter that picture. Helping a startup involves understanding organizations whose calendars and incentives may be quite different from its own.

By November 2025, his attention was on how communities judge progress. Announcements and ribbon cuttings have obvious appeal. He wanted economic strategy to consider incomes, whether talent stays and whether homegrown businesses grow. These questions take longer to answer than counting the guests at an opening.

There is a consistency here with the manufacturing center. Ask about the effect on the business, then on the people and the place around it. A crowded launch and a useful organization can coincide. The crowd alone leaves the useful part untested.

After the company is sold

In January 2026, Moore’s work included convening groups in Greenville and Spartanburg for founders who had exited their businesses. Their discussions addressed new wealth, changes in lifestyle, identity and plans for the future. Selling a company resolves a transaction. It also changes a person’s daily relationship with something they spent years building.

The group format extends his interest in peers to a different stage of entrepreneurship. An experienced founder can still face unfamiliar decisions. A sale may bring resources and choices without supplying a ready-made answer about what to do with either.

This is a revealing place for Moore’s story to arrive. He helped create an organization, later left its chief executive’s job, and went on finding other ways to work with founders. Now some of those founders are considering their own next chapters. The business changes; the need for an honest conversation persists.

Moore’s own order of priorities puts community first, followed by the organization and then himself. His continuing work gives that order a practical form: find the people, understand the problem and make the introduction. Then leave enough room for them to talk.