The Rural We: Jeremy Rawitz
The businessman has started a Millennial Meetup group to bring together young professions in the Berkshires.
Monterey, Mass. resident Jeremy Rawitz is an entrepreneurial salesman. After college, he worked on Wall Street, then started a company, and bought a sales training franchise that helped startups get to scale. He became vice president of revenue for Techstars, a startup accelerator, where he partnered with some of the largest companies in the world. The goal of Techstars, he says, is to make the world better through improving the lives of entrepreneurs. Now he is putting his skills and passion into improving the lives of residents in small towns. His first action: creating a Millennial Meetup group in Great Barrington.
I came to the Berkshires in 1984 and built a house but haven’t been living fulltime here until the last three years. I love small towns. My passion is for rural communities, and more and more, I’ve been able to turn my sales efforts to small cities. But there’s a crying need for small towns. At Techstars I ran the Startup Weekends, which are community programs that help connect budding entrepreneurs with the right people and resources. We ran 1100 of them in 123 countries and over 700 cities. Two years ago we held one in Great Barrington. We had 67 participants, 29 pitches and 5 finalists.
I have two projects right now: Reviving Main Street, to help business growth in the Berkshires, and the Millennial Meetup. I know there are millennials all over the place here. We need them to stay; they just have to get to know each other. I felt like I had to find them. I rushed out the Millennial Meetup on Aug. 26 and a group of seven people showed up. They were very enthusiastic. We had a discussion about what is going to work here and how to find everybody. They want experiential networking opportunities, and came up with some activities, like a farm tour to learn about organic foods, and since they love to dance, they’re scheduling a dance lesson.
We’re using the name Shire Social for now. I’m encouraging them to lead this; I’ll have a quiet hand in the background. The biggest challenge is how to find the millennials. Their main channel is their phone, so we need platforms to attract them.
I think these young people can also help businesses here improve their digital presence. There are kids here who aren’t going back to college right now — they’re taking a gap year. I’m trying to get some grant money to pay them. They can work with the businesses to put them on Shopify or other platforms so their customers can find them. People can go to the stores virtually, and we can start branding that in town.
