Sam Walton made a bet most CEOs wouldn’t make. He built the world’s largest company and kept it rooted in a town of 50,000 people. That bet left something behind: An intoxicating ambition baked into the place itself. You can feel it walking through Bentonville. Big projects and small ones, all pointing in the same direction.
I’ve spent my career close to this kind of energy. Thinking about how momentum builds, who shows up first, and what happens when someone gets into the right room at the right moment. I run Startup NWA, where we lead Onward HQ, the startup incubator above Onyx in Downtown Bentonville, and Onward FX, a statewide founder-funder exchange we built with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. The founders coming through these programs are building in retail tech, supply chain, healthcare, outdoor recreation, and AI. They’re choosing this region because the problems are visible, the customers are close, and the feedback is immediate.
What I keep learning is that the best opportunity is often just the one with the shortest distance to a decision-maker. A warm intro. A customer meeting. A second call. Each one can change the slope of a whole company, and when that slope changes, so does the founder’s life and sometimes the community around them.
Here’s the thing most people outside the startup world don’t realize: Over 80% of all venture funding in this country still flows to companies in three states. The earliest stage of company building – the moment someone has a thesis and needs a first believer – is the stage getting squeezed hardest. The national market was never built to find founders in places like ours, but Walton didn’t have a venture ecosystem backing him when he opened that first store on the square. He had suppliers who took a chance, early customers who showed up, and a community that let him experiment. The belief came first, infrastructure came later.
A $1,000 investment in Walmart at its 1970 IPO would be worth over $38 million today. Few show up before the numbers make it obvious. The distance between those two choices is the distance between watching something happen and participating in the outcome. Beyond writing checks, a first customer validates a business, and a first hire shapes the culture. Every early believer compounds.
So the question for people who live here is simple: Do you want to be part of what’s forming?
Take a meeting with a founder building something adjacent to your industry. Make an introduction to someone who could be their first customer. Attend a demo day because you’re curious. Write a small check because you believe in the person. Every person who shows up signals to the next person that something real is happening here.
This capacity for connection is Arkansas’ real superpower. Collaboration is in our DNA. Between business and government, universities and companies, or Fortune 500 and scrappy startups. We don’t silo ourselves the way other places do. Our economy is tight-knit and cross-functional by nature, and that gives us an edge.
The companies coming out of this region are starting to redefine how we work, how we build, and how we compete in the years ahead. That story is still early, which means there’s still time to be part of writing it.
Sam Walton bet on this place when nobody else would. The founders building here today are making the same bet.
They could use a few more believers.