It's Your Business: What did The Mill accomplish in 2022? Pat East shares the results.
Pat East, executive director, shares the highlights of how students, new businesses and companies were helped this past year.

December is a perfect time reflect, especially in the last week of the year when lots of folks are taking time off and it's easier to find time to think. For me, reflecting includes reviewing my monthly stakeholder updates from the previous year, taking stock of the big wins and getting motivated for the upcoming year. My big takeaway: The Mill and our startups have accomplished a lot. Our staff and the companies we help are extraordinary hard workers. I'm proud to lead this group of folks as we help bring Bloomington into the new economy. They're smart folks who are doing cool, interesting things and I hope the list below makes you agree.
Periodic was acquired
Student member from Indiana University won a Rhodes scholarship
Boys & Girls Club partnership announced
3 pre-accelerators launched: Crane + Cohorts + IU faculty staff
MetroStar announced they're adding 100 jobs
Cook had a (near) billion-dollar exit
Flywheel Fund II invested in women and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) at 10 times the national averages
Hit $1 million fundraising goal for Flywheel Fund III
IU Ventures ranked 12th most active Great Lakes investor
$1 million of economic impact for Bloomington Remote
8 Mill/Flywheel/Crossroads companies were nominated for a Mira award from TechPoint
Applications for Crossroads Collegiate were up 50%
Hosted ROI's inaugural expo for high school student-run businesses
Startup Summer, our paid internships for student startup founders, launched
Hosted Elevate's Nexus Pitch Competition
Hosted Indiana Economic Dev Corp.'s Startup Genome
Kupros moved to Bloomington
With the Boys & Girls Club, we improved 2021's Lemonade Day metrics by 3 times
Completed third cohort of gBETA, a pre-accelerator for near-revenue startups
Renewed Velocities, our $2.5 million partnership with Columbus and Elevate Ventures to provide resources and support to entrepreneurs and early-stage companies
Flywheel Fund hired its first full-time employee, a venture analyst
Women & BIPOC scholarship fund hit capacity for 2022
Bloomington employees won 10% of TechPoint's Tech 25 awards
Mill-affiliated startups comprised 25% of pitches at Innovation Showcase
Bloomington was named the #15 best startup city in the Midwest and #2 in Indiana
High schoolers will receive dual credit for Ivy Tech entrepreneurial classes
Folia won Startup of the Year
Atlas was accepted into gener8tor, a nationwide accelerator
80% of the state winners at Kinetic had participated in Crossroads
Cardinal Spirits was named the Best Craft Distillery in the country
MetroStar won a $155 million contract
SecondSight raised $3 million
Held our fifth Innovation Week, including our 5th Best Places to Work
We passed 350 members, an all-time high
Hosted Elevate's Nexus Pitch Competition
Hosted Indiana Economic Dev Corp's Global Entrepreneurship Week
Mill Cohorts – Focused on Indiana University students
Code/IT Academy for 2022
Spring CompTIA Security+ (Cybersecurity), enrolled 21 students
Summer Intro to Web Design, enrolled 30 students
Fall AWS Cloud Practitioner, enrolled 30 students
We moved 24 folks to Bloomington, averaging 1-3 per month
The economic impact will be $2 million annually from this cohort
80% of capital for Flyweel Fund III is still being deployed
We invested about $850,000 into 16 companies
Half those investments are in Bloomington.
Pat East is executive director of The Mill, a nonprofit entrepreneurship center on a mission to launch and accelerate startups, and ultimately to become Indiana's center of gravity for entrepreneurship.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington's The Mill helped start-ups, businesses in 2022