This past Monday was the first meeting of the SpringStage Angel/Entrepreneur Meetup. While there wasn't a ton of progress made towards getting the group off the ground, it was an important step in the right direction for the DFW startup community. A step in the direction of facilitating engagement between startups, their entrepreneurs and the angel investor community here in the metroplex. So what is this so important? As a perfect example, I happen to come across a really cool website today thrown together by a couple of guys in one night. As I was chatting with one of the creators and the subject turned to funding he mentioned he didn't really know what an angel investment was. Neither did I until I happened to stumble across the Texas Startup Blog last year when I moved to Fort Worth. I also didn't know was seed funding was or Series A and a number of other things that are pretty important to a lot of startups. It seems that there is this sort of underground here in DFW of smart people doing smart things, but nobody knows about it, and entrepreneurs don't necessarily know where they can go to get the help and advice to take their ideas to the next level. We need to change that, and I think that is was SpringStage is (hopefully) about. With a thriving, well-organized community focused on mentorship I believe we can build a thriving startup environment that will rival Austin, Boulder, San Francisco and any other place well known for startups. Such a community will go a long way in keeping smart entrepreneurs building really cool stuff here where they can have an impact on our local economy, inspire more local innovation and help solidify DFW as a place where startups can succeed.