Spokane Snapshot– Bill Kalivas, LaunchPad INW, LLC

Bill Kali­vas– Man­ag­ing Part­ner at Launch­Pad INW, LLC.

I walk across the hall here in the 1889 Build­ing at Main & Stevens to find Bill. The office is empty, his lap­top wait­ing patiently on the desk. “Any­body seen Bill?” Oh, he’s at a meet­ing. Two hours later I notice his door is slightly open, but a glance through the win­dow and I see he’s on the phone. This guy is net­work­ing 24/7, it seems! It’s more than a full-time job run­ning the day-to-day at LaunchPad.

Although Launch­Pad recently broke the 5,000 mem­ber mark you might not be famil­iar with it yet– Launch­Pad is a pro­fes­sional net­work­ing and busi­ness devel­op­ment com­pany located here in Spokane, WA. The phys­i­cal loca­tion is 120 North Stevens. And you can find them online at launchpadinw.com. LaunchPad’s focus is to help orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als achieve their career goals by offer­ing train­ing and work­shops that max­i­mize their pro­fes­sional skill-set. Build­ing syn­ergy between busi­ness & com­mu­nity lead­ers and the edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity is another goal of Launch­Pad– some­thing Bill feels will bring long-term ben­e­fits to the membership.

But how did this all get started? Sev­eral years ago Bill was in tech­nol­ogy sales, mak­ing cold calls in Seat­tle while based in Spokane. He expe­ri­enced the dif­fi­culty of pen­e­trat­ing a mar­ket with­out strate­gic rela­tion­ships. Bill saw the impor­tance of hav­ing a net­work based not only in the town where you are work­ing but also know­ing the right peo­ple in your cho­sen industry.

In early 2008 Bill learned about a web­site plat­form that sup­ported net­work­ing through online com­mu­ni­ties. With busi­ness part­ner Alan Bat­tle, Bill pushed the idea for­ward while work­ing out of the Spokane Entre­pre­neur­ial Cen­ter. They incor­po­rated the LLC in Feb­ru­ary of 2009 and moved into the Hol­ley Mason build­ing later that year. Mem­ber­ship and aware­ness con­tin­ued to grow as they hosted events in the Launch­Pad Lounge. In Decem­ber of 2010 Launch­Pad began leas­ing space in the 1889 Build­ing at Main & Stevens. Now they have a Train­ing Room on the main floor, shared office spaces and work­sta­tions on the 3rd floor and a Member’s Lounge in the base­ment (with art pro­vided by Kent Hen­der­son Pho­tog­ra­phy- shame­less plug!)

Bill and his wife enjoy rais­ing their fam­ily here in Spokane and Bill is excited to be part of the solu­tion to strength­en­ing Spokane’s econ­omy– “The great­est assets are the peo­ple. We need to encour­age the entre­pre­neurs and the inno­va­tors. We need to help these peo­ple reach their goals.” And Launch­Pad is ful­fill­ing Bill’s vision by pro­vid­ing an atmos­phere for pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment and net­work­ing both online and offline. If you haven’t checked out Launch­Pad yet, just visit their web­site– launchpadinw.com, sign up for a free mem­ber­ship, then look at Events and stop by for a work­shop. You will be rewarded with use­ful infor­ma­tion and you will meet other busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als who are try­ing to build value into our local economy.

Ran­dom fact–
One year Bill’s Hoopfest team had a mem­ber bail out for the whole week­end. In spite of hav­ing no sub­sti­tute, the team won all three games on Sat­ur­day! Then real­ity kicked in. On Sun­day all the aches and pains caught up to them and they lost two in a row and were done. Ouch!

This Blog–
Spokane Snap­shot high­lights local busi­ness own­ers and decision-makers and the good work being done by their com­pany. If you know some­one who is help­ing Spokane become a bet­ter, more sta­ble place to live and work, e-mail Kent (kentphoto@mac.com ) with your suggestion!