Yesterday evening I joined a group of 16 startup founders from the Lancaster area. Only two of them were there for the first time.

Since we started in May last year, we’ve seen some great progress. Clint has landed help from a local college for his algae production thing (too much to explain).

Damon and team have chosen not to pivot, but to start something entirely new–a very tough choice given the amount of time they’ve put into a veyr good idea.

Kyle, Kyle’s not talking. He’s there to help others.

New guy Mark is an attorney with a great drive and narrow focus on a niche that looks like it wil be a cash cow. Unlike a lot of non-techies who have an idea, he’s got a spec and a business model.

Dave is moving along with customer testing.

Mike and John are nearing beta. If you remember they chose not to outsource and instead added a technical co-founder back in November–someone they met at an earlier Startup Lancaster event. And they’re getting a deep level of care as a result.

And there were more. Everyone’s making progress. Even me–I ripped and replaced all of Jawaya, and will have something new soon, including a new take on it. Ah! And Steve came for the first time with his geo-tracking thing that’s heading to beta soon–built on Node, of course. As rock start Chris Matthieu of Nodester says, “hack the planet, dude”.

It’s a small group, but it’s thriving. And I think in May it might be time for a little show and tell to some local investors and VCs, just to see what we could do here, instead of seeing them fly the coop out to Palo Alto or up to NYC or some other tech magnet.

If this is happening in Lancaster, imagine what you could do in, say, Reading? It’s like Lancaster without the glitz 😉