Leveling up to the business and life you want doesn’t need to be lonely.

Eric Mathews builds innovators and entrepreneurs who grow new solutions to change industries. Beginning in 2006 starting with just his savings and credit cards, he began creating the early-stage entrepreneurial ecosystem components in Memphis, Tennessee. Eric co-founded Start Co., an internationally recognized venture development organization where he serves as CEO. Start Co. supports entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of starting up from raw idea forward. It includes business and technical assistance, investment capital, acceleration, and resource cultivation for an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem. Through these efforts, Eric has materially supported over 250 businesses and social impact organizations with investment alongside business and technical assistance. These firms have collectively raised over $70MM with the privately held businesses worth over a quarter billion dollars in market capitalization. Over 1,000 jobs have been created and over $100MM in revenue garnered from this work. Over 40% of the founders Eric has supported have been women and over 40% are people of color.

As part of these efforts Eric has been a pioneer, building some of the first systems to support varied and diverse founders, many of whom come from all over the US and world to participate and receive support. In 2007, he built the first co-working space in Tennessee. In 2011, he built the first cohort accelerator to operate in the Southeast. In 2013, he co-built one of the first accelerators to invest in women-led teams in the world, which was named one of the top 10 in the world for women-led founders by Forbes in 2015. In 2013, Eric co-built the first angel fund and network to operate in Memphis since 2002. Start Co. in recent years has partnered to build the first medical device accelerator in the world (rated a top 20 program globally) as well as a corporate accelerator in home services technology, a logistics technology accelerator, and an agricultural technology accelerator.

Prior to these endeavors, Eric was the Associate Director of Corporate Research & Development at the FedEx Institute of Technology. There he grew research programs & business development activities including growing strategic business relationships with Fortune 500 companies. Additionally there he supported technology transfer and commercialization efforts.

Eric has a B.S. in Chemistry from Rhodes College & a M.S. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Memphis where he studied artificial intelligence. His advice, work, and thinking have been featured in media outlets including the Financial Times, Inc., The Next Web, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Success, Forbes, Agence France Presse, and many others.

With a passion for supporting the arts, Eric currently serves on the board of BalletMemphis. To build a dense, smart community Eric serves on the board of the Center City Revenue Finance Corporation and previously was on the board of the Center City Development Corporation – both in Memphis. In 2012, Eric also served a one-year appointment as interim Executive Director of EmergeMemphis, the Midsouth’s business incubator, while still building Start Co. Eric is the author of From Garage to Greatness: Succinct First Steps for Early Stage Entrepreneurs, an accessible book for first time entrepreneurs and those supporting them about how to move from idea to business launch. He also authored, Unleashing Unprecedented Potential: The Key to Get Beyond 10X Thinking in Life, a book on personal transformation. With Al Pickett, he co-authored You Are The Edge: Transform Yourself To Transform Your Trading and Life, a book on mindset for investment trading. With his family Eric co-invested and supports the growth of building product, medical device manufacturing, & real estate businesses. Because of the investments made, Eric serves on the boards of many early stage startups and social enterprises. Eric is an Eagle Scout, Young Entrepreneurs Council member, and board member to the Global Accelerator Network (formerly TechStars Network).

Serving in the Community and Beyond

September 2002 – May 2004 – Discourse Processes (Journal) – Reviewer

September 2005 – December 2007– Lantana Projects (501c3) – Board of Directors

September 2007 – May 2008 – Incarnation School, Collierville, TN – School Board Member

May 2005 – May 2010 – St. Benedict at Auburndale School, Memphis, TN – School Board Member

August 2008 – August 2010 – Rhodes College – Leadership Council

September 2008 – September 2012 – Voices of the South (501c3) – Board of Directors

September 2008 – September 2013 – Project: Motion (501c3) – Board of Directors

September 2009 – December 2017 – Center City Development Corporation – Board of Directors, Secretary, Chairman

June 2009 – Present – Ballet Memphis (501c3) – Board of Directors

November 2013 – Present – SXSW Accelerator/Pitch – Advisory Board

November 2019 – Present – Inventures Pitch – Advisory Board

May 2015 – Present – Global Accelerator Network – Board of Directors

May 2018 – Present – Center City Revenue Finance Corporation – Board of Directors, Vice Chairman, Chairman

Writing Beyond My Books

Major Global Report for Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

A Global Report by Eric Mathews (2022) Reviewing 15+ Years of Accelerator Dividends: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Returns and a Roadmap for Future Success. Denver, Colorado: GAN.

Other Writing

Publications

D’Mello, S., Mathews, E. C., McCauley, L., and Markham J. (2008). Impact of Position and Orientation of RFID Tags on Real Time Asset Tracking in a Supply Chain. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 3(1), 1-12.

Hanson, D., Olney, A., Prilliman, S., Mathews, E., Zielke, M., Hammons, D., Fernandez, R., Stephanou, H. E. (2005). Upending the Uncanny Valley. Proceedings of the America Association of Artificial Intelligence 2005 (pp. 1728-1729). Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press. (Award Winning Robot: First place for Interactivity)

Graesser, A. C., Jackson, G. T., Mathews, E. C., Mitchell, H. H., Olney, A.,Ventura, M., Chipman, P., Franceschetti, D., Hu, X., Louwerse, M.M., Person, N.K., & TRG (2003). Why/AutoTutor: A test of learning gains from a physics tutor with natural language dialog. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 474-479). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Olney, A., Chipman, P. & Graesser, A. C. (2003). Achieving Domain Independence in AutoTutor. In N. Callaos, M. Margenstern, J. Zhang, O. Castillo, E. Doberkat (Eds.), The Seventh World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics Proceedings: Computer Science and Engineerings I, Vol. 5 (pp. 172-176). Orlando: IIIS. (Award Winning Paper)

Jackson, G. T., Mathews, E. C., Lin, D., Graesser, A. C. (2003). Modeling Student Performance to Enhance the Pedagogy of AutoTutor. In P. Brusilovsky, A. Corbett, and F. de Rosis (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence: 2702 (pp. 368-372). New York: Springer.

Olney, A., Louwerse, M., Mathews, E. C., Marineau, J., Hite-Mitchell, H., & Graesser, A. (2003). Utterance Classification in AutoTutor. In J. Burstein & C. Leacock (Eds.), Building Educational Applications using Natural Language Processing: Proceedings of the Human Language Technology – North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Conference 2003 Workshop, May 31, ( pp. 1-8). Philadelphia: Association for Computational Linguistics.

Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C.. (2003). Discourse Patterns in Why/AutoTutor. Proceedings of the 2003 AAAI Spring Symposia on Natural Language Generation in Spoken and Written Dialogue. (pp.97-103). Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press.

Hu, X., Mathews, E. C., Graesser, A. C., Susarla, S. (2002). EBOOK.EXE: A Desktop Authoring Tool for HURAA. Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education. Montreal, Canada: AACE Press.

Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C., Bautista, L., Mathews, E. C., & the Tutoring Research Group (2001). Evaluating Student Learning Gains in Two Versions of AutoTutor. In J. D. Moore, C. L. Redfield, & W. L. Johnson (Eds.) Artificial intelligence in education: AI-ED in the wired and wireless future (pp. 286-293). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C., Harter, D., Mathews, E. C., & the Tutoring Research Group. (2000). Dialog move generation and conversation management in AutoTutor. Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium: Building Dialogue Systems for Tutorial Applications (pp.45-51). Falmouth, MA: AAAI Press.

Refereed Conference Presentations

Mathews, E., Lancaster, W., Hu, X. & Susarla, S. (2005, October). ELearning Analytics in Industry. Presented at USDLA Fall Training 2005 Conference. Long Beach, CA.

Hu, X., Mathews, E., & Graesser, A. C. (2004, August). ITS and SCORM. Presented at MERLOT International Conference. Cost Mesa, CA.

Hu, X., Susarla, S., Graesser, A. C., & Mathews E. (2004, August). Lesson Planner – a Meta Authoring Tool Applied to AutoTutor. Presented at MERLOT International Conference. Cost Mesa, CA.

Graesser, A. C., Jackson, G.T., Mathews, E. C., Mitchell, H. H., Olney, A., Ventura, M., Chipman, P., Franceschetti, D., Hu, X., Louwerse, M. M., Person, N. K., and the Tutoring Research Group. (July, 2003) Why/AutoTutor: A Test of Learning Gains from a Physics Tutor with Natural Language Dialog. Presented at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA.

Hu, X., Mathews, E. C., Graesser, A. C., Susarla, S. (2002, October). EBOOK.EXE: A Desktop Authoring Tool for HURAA. Presented at the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education. Montreal, Canada.

Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Olney, A., Chipman, P. & Graesser, A. C. (July, 2003). Achieving Domain Independence in AutoTutor. Presented at The Seventh World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics Proceedings. Orlando, FL.

Jackson, G. T., Mathews, E. C., Lin, D., Graesser, A. C. (2003, June). Modeling Student Performance to Enhance the Pedagogy of AutoTutor. Presented at the 2003 Conference on User Modeling. Johnstown, PA.

Olney , A., Louwerse, M. M., Mathews, E. C., Marineau, J., Hite-Mitchell, H. (2003, June) Utterance Classification in AutoTutor. Presented at the Workshop on Building Educational Applications using Natural Language Processing at the Human Language Technology – North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Conference. Edmonton, Canada.

Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C. (March, 2003). Discourse Patterns in Why/AutoTutor. Presented at the 2003 AAAI Spring Symposia on Natural Language Generation in Spoken and Written Dialogue, Palo Alto, CA.

Redfearn, R. D., Pendley, B. D., Lemme, D. P., Mathews, E. C., Roberts, J. K. (March, 2003). Pyrolysis GC-MS experimentation for the undergraduate analytical instrumentation laboratory. Presented at the 225th American Chemical Society National Meeting. New Orleans, LA.

Mathews, E. C., Louwerse, M. M., Person, N. K., & Graesser, A. C. (2003, January). Investigation of Conditional Language in Specific Applications and Domains. Presented at the Winter Conference on Discourse, Text, and Cognition. Jackson Hole, WY.

Mathews, E. C., Olney, A., Marineau, J., Mitchell, H. H., & Louwerse, M. M (2002, June). Development of an Advanced Speech Act Classification System. Presented at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse. Chicago, IL.

Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C., Bautista, L., Mathews, E. C., & the Tutoring Research Group (2001, May). Evaluating Student Learning Gains in Two Versions of AutoTutor. Presented at the 10th International Conference of Artificial Intelligence in Education. San Antonio, TX.

Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C., Jackson, G. T., Mathews, E. C., & the Tutoring Research Group (2001, January). Evaluating student learning outcomes for two versions of AutoTutor. Presented at the Winter Conference on Discourse, Text, and Cognition. Jackson Hole, WY.

Person, N. K., Graesser, A. C., Harter, D., Mathews, E. C., & the Tutoring Research Group (2000, November). Managing the tutorial interaction in AutoTutor. Presented at AAAI Fall Symposium Series, Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Invited Presentations

Mathews, E. C. (June 2015) Memphis Case Study: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Creative HQ, Wellington, New Zealand.

Person, N. K. & Mathews, E. C. (October, 2003) Academic Research and Project Management. Invited talk to the Memphis Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Memphis, TN.

Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Susarla, S. & Graesser, A. C. (April, 2003) AutoTutor: Intelligent Tutoring and Animated Conversational Agent. Invited talk to The Internet2 Community: Research & Education in Tennessee given at the Emerging Technologies for Higher Education Conference. Memphis, TN.

Jackson, G. T. & Mathews, E. C. (March, 2003). Demo of Why/AutoTutor. Invited presentation for the 2003 AAAI Spring Symposia on Natural Language Generation. Palo Alto, CA.

Technical & Other Major Reports

Haynes, B. C., Mathews, E. C., Jackson, G. T., Franceschetti , D., & Graesser, A. C. (2003) Incorporating Dialog into a Physics Simulation Environment (Technical Report 8-30-2003). Memphis, TN: Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Fowlkes, A. K., & Mathews, E. C., (2013) MEMx. Memphis, TN: Start Co.

Fowlkes, A. K., & Mathews, E. C., (2016) Zero Gravity. Memphis, TN: Start Co.

Fowlkes, A. K., & Mathews, E. C., (2018) The 800. Memphis, TN: Start Co.

Fowlkes, A. K., & Mathews, E. C., (2020) Catalyst30. Memphis, TN: Start Co.