It's Your Business: What did The Mill accomplish in 2022? Pat East shares the results.

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