The Missouri Association for Technology Advancement or MATA Tech was formed to accomplish three primary missions

Our Market:
The Saint Louis technology community has long been seen as a follower in the IT industry. Seldom is Saint Louis, or the Mid-West in general, recognized as a source of innovation or technical growth.

Much of this perception is based on an unbalanced focus on corporate IT with comparatively little attention paid to the technical start-up community. Further, those Mid-west based start ups that manage to gain traction find it much more difficult to acquire capital through Angel Investors or Venture Capital Companies. This trend has created an environment that naturally stifles the innovation that comes from entrepreneurial endeavors.

Further, the local employment market has lead to a high number of unemployed technicians, from an economic perspective these individuals are seen as excess capacity. Much of this "capacity" is composed of senior technicians from large organizations. These technicians often have a strong balance of technical and business acumen making them prime candidates to lead entrepreneurial endeavors in technology focused companies.

Opportunity:
Saint Louis as a technical community, has a unique opportunity to ignite the flames of innovation and establish the Saint Louis Metropolitan Area as a regional center for innovation. Empowering this base of "excess capacity" and assisting individuals to leverage their technical skills in an entrepreneurial environment would cause an explosive growth of start-up activity in Saint Louis.

This growth will ultimately lead to a stronger technical community in the Saint Louis Area.  It would also produce an increase in employment opportunities and the rapid adoption of advanced technology.