KRISTOPHER PRIEMER
| Company Founded: | MOMENTUM Entrepreneurship Hub | Graduation Year: | 2011 |
| Title: | Co-Founder and President | Degree: | ESTEEM Graduate Program |
| Location: | South Bend, IN | Residence Hall: | NA |
Momentum is a hallmark of entrepreneurship.
Ideation. Tweaking. Full-on pivots. Meeting milestones. Fails. Rising above. Moving on.
Momentum.
After graduating from Saint Louis University, South Bend native Kris Priemer accepted a position as a fixed income trader with Edward Jones in Saint Louis. After hours, he scoured Entrepreneurship magazine and books on startups and founders.
Eight months into his job, he heard about a new Master of Science program offered by the University of Notre Dame called ESTEEM that stressed “doing” entrepreneurship rather than simply studying it.
“I was immediately intrigued,” says Priemer. “I wasn’t totally sure what ESTEEM was, but the more I read, the more excited I got. I told my leader at Edward Jones—a Notre Dame grad—about it. He encouraged me to apply. It was a big decision to quit work and go back to school.”
Once admitted into ESTEEM, Priemer made a point of not re-engaging with hometown “stuff.”
“Leaving my first job out of college was a huge deal. So I committed myself to being hyper-focused on getting everything I could out of my time at Notre Dame. I concentrated all of my attention on the program, my classmates, lectures, workshops and the McCloskey New Venture Competition. I didn’t want to be distracted. As a result, I got a lot out of it.”
He adds, “ESTEEM solidified my passion for entrepreneurship.”
At the completion of the 11-month program, most of Priemer’s classmates left for formal jobs elsewhere. He opted to stay in South Bend. Notre Dame’s Innovation Park, a 60,000-square-foot building to house up to 60 startup companies, had just been built and was an incredible new addition to the regional ecosystem. During ESTEEM, Priemer had worked for a few startups on a part-time basis. His hope was that one would hire him full-time.
That didn’t pan out. So he decided to do his own thing. Six months after graduation, he was hired by the City of South Bend to manage projects. “Mark Neal, who worked with Mayor Pete Buttigieg, became my mentor. For the next 18 months, I led a number of projects, the biggest of which was building South Bend’s 311 program. This was a number anyone could call and get access to any city service. This project made it much easier for citizens to navigate bureaucracy and helped fulfill one of Mayor Pete’s campaign promises.”
Eager to flex his entrepreneurial muscles, Priemer founded a startup called ArtistHub. During his undergraduate years, he had helped friends with a band get gigs to perform. Remembering how fragmented the entertainment business was, he saw an opportunity.
“There wasn’t any transparency for venues on cost. As a result, what venues paid for bands varied widely. I thought I could solve the problem with software that streamlined the process of booking talent,” he explains.
Priemer built his first app, created a database of talent and when the entertainment industry showed no interest in changing the status quo, he shut ArtistHub down. “I learned a hard lesson.”
Down but not out, he started Priemer Consulting in 2014, largely out of necessity. “I needed to start making money.” Much like many entrepreneurs before him, Priemer dove into market research, talking with business owners across the South Bend-Elkhart region to determine pain points and how he could solve them. These conversations led to an inflection point in Priemer’s entrepreneurial journey.
In 2015, he launched a custom website development and marketing firm. The business took off with little to no marketing on the part of Priemer. “For the first three years, I didn’t have a website. All of our business came by referral.”
Then, in 2021, Priemer acquired a software platform for uploading and sharing presentations from a friend. Speaker Deck, which turns ordinary decks into engaging online experiences, is designed for use by entrepreneurs, teachers, scientists, corporations—anyone who wants to bring ideas and information to life. Users can upload unlimited slides, making it a robust platform.
Speaker Deck took off and not just among the initial intended users. Screenwriters in the television and film industry have embraced it as a way to take written scripts to the next level. It’s also a great way to share their work with producers, directors and production companies looking for great material.
Says Priemer, “Speaker Deck is a playground people are using to test ideas. It is super cool and easy to use. Surprisingly, 50 percent of our paying customers are Japanese.”
The momentum continued. Not satisfied with two businesses, Priemer acquired an imprinted sportswear company in 2024 called Access Imprinted Sportswear. Fittingly, the company’s redesigned logo is a chameleon, perhaps reflecting Priemer’s ability to move from business to business with ease.
Behind the scenes, Priemer was working on his biggest, most high-profile company of all, the Momentum Entrepreneurship Hub.
As context, a little more than a decade ago, Newsweek declared South Bend to be one of America’s “dying cities.” Since then, South Bend and the region at large have worked hard to reinvent itself. And therein lay an opportunity for Priemer.
“I have been involved in the South Bend-Elkhart regional ecosystem for the last 10 years. Notre Dame and the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership have done a great job, and I’ve done my part. But I saw fragmentation in all of the resources being created. Something was missing from our ecosystem, and I wanted to build a solution, a place where entrepreneurs can more readily access local resources and start companies here instead of leaving the region,” he explains.
Priemer was familiar with the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas, which is billed as the Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas. The Capital Factory offers 80,000 square feet of co-working and meeting space, mentoring from a curated network of CEOs, investors and service providers, plus events for entrepreneurs and early-stage startups.
“This was a concept I thought would work well in South Bend; a place to bring people together to be creative and take risks. Entrepreneurs would be able to find everything they needed at Momentum instead of having to figure it all out like I had to do,” Priemer explains.
And he had already identified a potential location: The old Salvation Army Building on South Main Street. Built in 1954, the building had been vacant since 2015, and city officials were eager for the 60,000-square-foot building to be redeveloped. “It was very open and industrial; perfect for our vision of creating a community, co-working and meeting spaces. It was easy to visualize it as a cool space for entrepreneurs to meet and work.”
Just like a traditional startup, Priemer had to pitch the idea to city officials and the leaders of the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership. At first, the skepticism was palpable, but as people began to understand the potential impact and how Momentum could spur additional economic development, support began to build for Momentum. In addition to receiving funding from the City of South Bend, the project also received funding from the Indiana READI Program, short for Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative. The READI Program encourages communities across the state to work collaboratively to develop a bold vision for their future that, when implemented, will attract, develop and retain talent in Indiana.
Priemer has hosted special events for the last 18 months to build awareness and excitement for Momentum. One of the most successful of these was an IDEA Week event in April 2024 in the Salvation Army Building. Because construction had not yet started, Priemer relied on 3D renderings to showcase the “coming soon” space.
“People were excited to see what we’re doing. Everyone agreed Momentum is something the region really needs and one that can have a huge positive impact on the region in attracting entrepreneurs and investors and encouraging Notre Dame and other college graduates to stay in the region.”
Construction documents for Momentum were approved in early July. Preleasing will begin in August. Priemer is targeting tenants that are entrepreneurial and will spark collaboration. These include entrepreneurs, including recent college graduates working in startups; angel investors; mentors; and remote workers such as software developers working on their own projects or who are willing to work with other Momentum tenants and others in the region.
The next big milestone will be the grand opening in April 2025 during IDEA Week, with Notre Dame as a sponsor.
And if this weren’t enough, Priemer is also developing SoMa Lofts on the same block as Momentum. He and a group of partners have purchased a dilapidated, 100-year-old building and are developing it into residential lofts for entrepreneurs. It is another win for revitalizing South Bend’s South Main Street.
Priemer says the biggest challenge to date with Momentum was getting people to buy into the vision. “People didn’t see what the building could be. There was a lot of skepticism and ‘Do we really need this?’ Thanks to a lot of promotion, there’s been a 180-degree change. It was a grind getting to this point, but people are now excited.”
The biggest win has been securing the support of the City of South Bend, the South Bend-Elkhart Regional Partnership and others. “The support we’ve gotten solidified the need for the project. People believe in Momentum and want to see us succeed.”
Being named to the South Bend Regional Chamber’s Forty under 40 list in June was another gratifying win. “It solidified that what I’m doing is on the right track,” he says.
Asked what advice he would offer to those who want to become entrepreneurs, Priemer reflected a moment before answering.
“When I first committed myself to entrepreneurship and being on my own without a traditional job, figuring out what that looked like was a challenge. I was no longer getting up in the morning and going to a job. I had to learn the true meaning of self-motivation. I may not have known exactly what I was going to do, but I had to get up in the morning and start working.”
He adds, “What helped me the most was finding mentors to provide feedback and poke holes in my ideas.”
Priemer urges others not to be afraid of failure. “Be willing to make the leap. Get in front of the right people. Everything I’ve done and learned over the last 10 years, the failures and the wins, have taken me forward.”
That’s momentum.