Montana’s Entrepreneurship Lessons for Rural America

Entrepreneurship is easiest to see up close—it’s the small business owner hiring a neighbor, the student turning an idea into a company or the local lender helping a founder bridge the gap between ambition and growth. Across rural America, entrepreneurship is creating jobs, building wealth and helping communities adapt to a changing economy. But this momentum has not always been easy to measure at scale.

The Rural Entrepreneurship Index, developed by the Capital One Insights Center and the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI), helps bring that momentum into clearer view. By combining data on business formation, self-employment and innovation, the Index shows where rural economic activity is accelerating and the factors shaping local growth.

In Bozeman, Montana, Capital One, the Montana Chamber of Commerce and CORI joined together for an event that paired the data from the Rural Entrepreneurship Index with the lived experience of entrepreneurs, policymakers, educators, lenders and civic leaders. 

At the center of the conversation was a view of entrepreneurship as both an economic force and a pathway for people to build opportunity where they live. “The entrepreneur is the hero in that narrative, because entrepreneurs create businesses, which create livelihoods, which lead to a path to pursuing the American dream,” said Gov. Greg Gianforte, who joined Montana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd O’Hair for a conversation onstage.

“With more than 400,000 Capital One customers across Montana, including small business owners using our banking, credit and financial tools to start and grow, Bozeman offered a really compelling place for us to move beyond our data and hear the story behind the research,” said Dr. Shena Ashley, President of the Capital One Insights Center and Vice President of Community Impact and Investment at Capital One.  “The community brought to life what our Rural Innovation Index Shows: entrepreneurial activity is strongest when local leaders, institutions, and financial tools come together to create real pathways for growth.”

The Index helps policymakers, investors and local leaders see where entrepreneurial activity is emerging. The Bozeman conversation added the human context behind that activity. As Amanda Weinstein, Director of Research, Knowledge and Evaluation at CORI, put it, “the Index represents data points which are real businesses and [there] are real actions that support those businesses.” 

Entrepreneurship was discussed not as an abstract idea but as a practical view of how communities grow. Speakers described founders who reinvest in other founders, universities that connect talent to opportunity, lenders that help businesses become ready for capital and local leaders focused on the infrastructure needed to sustain growth.

Bozeman Deputy Mayor Douglas Fischer described that foundation in concrete terms, pointing to the city’s long-term investments in photonics, optics and community fiber. “Infrastructure empowers,” Fischer said, adding that communities need “stable, predictable governance that they can trust” to make growth possible.

Montana State University is an example of this important entrepreneurial infrastructure, serving as an anchor for talent, research and new company formation in the region. “In our DNA is a spirit of entrepreneurship,” said Dr. Brock Tessman, President of Montana State University. “Montanans in every corner of the state have great ideas. They have grit, they have determination.”

The Bozeman conversation kept returning to a simple idea – rural entrepreneurship is built through confidence and community. People are more willing to start, invest, hire and stay when they can see that others have done it before them, and when the people around them make the next step feel possible.

That is part of what makes local institutions like community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and universities so important. Their role is not only to provide financing or programs, but to help entrepreneurs move through the moments when an idea is promising but not yet ready for traditional capital, when a business is growing but needs guidance, or when a young person has talent but has not yet seen a path to build something close to home.

Marta Bertoglio, Director of the Montana Department of Commerce, emphasized the role of public-private partnership in making that support work. “Private industry brings speed, innovation and local insights,” Bertoglio said, while the state can “come along as a partner and bring long-term investment, infrastructure” and focus on what makes each local community unique.

Justin Everett, Regional Administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Rocky Mountain Region, said Montana offers lessons that can travel beyond the state. “We are looking to Montana as a model,” Everett said, adding that “there’s a reason why I’ve been to Montana 10 times, and I learned something new every time.”

Growth becomes easier to imagine when it is already visible. A founder sees another founder succeed. A student sees a company built from a local idea. A lender, mentor or public-sector partner helps an entrepreneur take the next step. Heidi DeArment, President and CEO of MoFi, described that kind of momentum as a dance floor that fills once the first few people step out.

“It’s really hard to be the first person out there on the dance floor,” DeArment said. “But when the governor builds a business here, when we invest in really strong leadership for the university, when we elect the right officials, then those are the first three people on the dance floor. Then the next business comes.”

Capital One’s recent $3 million investment in Montana, part of its five-year, $265 billion Community Benefits Plan, designed to help low- and moderate-income consumers, small businesses and communities increase their economic opportunity, reflects many of the same themes that surfaced in Bozeman. The investment supports access to capital for rural small businesses through MoFi and entrepreneurship infrastructure through Montana State University, including the Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship’s LaunchPad program.

Together, those efforts support two entrepreneurial necessities that came up repeatedly in the discussion, capital and capacity. Entrepreneurs need financing that fits the realities of their businesses, including timing, cash flow and stage of growth. They also need the support systems that help them become ready for that capital, use it well and sustain growth over time.

Mark Sharpe, Executive Director of the MSU Innovation Campus, made that point in discussing what helps early-stage entrepreneurs move forward. “There are a lot of folks that really aren’t ready for that type of capital,” Sharpe said. “What they need is good mentors.”

Sharpe added that Montana’s entrepreneurship ecosystem works because capital and community reinforce each other. “It’s the mentorship, obviously it’s the access to capital, but I think it’s just the collection of people that are here that want to help you.”

That is especially important for young people in rural communities. Speakers returned to the idea that Montana’s next generation already has talent, work ethic and ideas. The question is whether they can see a path to build where they live, rather than feeling that opportunity only exists somewhere else.

David Sigler, owner of Bridger Brewing, a Bozeman-founded brewery and small business, described that opportunity through the lens of Montana’s young people. “These kids are hardworking innovators, which is how I describe an entrepreneur,” Sigler said. “What holds them back is not knowing they can [succeed]."

Conversations like the one in Bozeman help reveal what sits beneath that momentum, including relationships, institutions, capital, mentorship, infrastructure and a culture that encourages people to pursue their dreams.

As the Capital One Insights Center and CORI continue to share insights from the Index, the goal is to help communities, investors and policymakers make more informed decisions about how to support rural entrepreneurs. Better visibility can help leaders recognize where economic activity is already taking shape and where targeted support can help it last.

Bozeman offered a clear reminder that rural entrepreneurship is not a single program or one-time investment. It is an ecosystem built over time by people who choose to start, stay, invest and help others do the same.