When Rob Wotton and Tad Haas get to shopping ideas about how they can help businesses, it can be hard to keep up.

For much of the past five years, and even more strongly in the past two, the duo have been spending their time and energy — and occasionally their own money — in an effort to further exploration and growth for businesses in the Snoqualmie Valley.

They serve as the brains behind the SnoValley Innovation Center, a youthful nonprofit that has been working to foster connections and build a thriving startup community in an area they say is ripe with opportunity.

“We are one of the most educated communities in the state and we have this wealth of knowledge and resources,” Wotton said.

“Someone may be an engineer and they may know how to build something that’s really innovative, but where they’re struggling is on the marketing piece or the finance piece,” Haas said. “We’re just there to help fill in the gaps so they have the resources to be more successful.”

The innovation center’s goals are all based on the principles that networking as well as trial and error can foster a better informed and more successful business community.

While the SnoValley Chamber helps businesses currently in operation, the innovation center is hoping to provide free resources for those looking to jump-start a new business or product.

The group’s most visible work so far is its weekly Friday meet-ups, which typically draw a handful of visitors each week. The meet-up brings together innovators from varying industries to share ideas and help young or start-up businesses get off the ground.

“It’s this network of people bringing their knowledge to the table for others,” Haas said. “We work with some new businesses that are stuck and we try to get them unstuck.”

On occasion, if the group finds a particularly good product, they connect innovators with Pacific Lutheran University, Wotton’s alma mater. PLU offers a program where inventors can present their product to students, who then, as part of a class assignment, work to market the product to modern consumers.

The innovation center has also been tackling the Valley’s labor shortage, which has left everyone from small businesses to city governments looking to fill vacancies.

Wotton said he bets two-thirds of Valley businesses are looking to hire. That’s mirrored by the fact that 15,000 people, he said, leave the Valley each day for work compared to only 6,000 people who drive in.

That imbalance prompted him, alongside the SnoValley Chamber, to found SnoValleyJobs.com, a website featuring hundreds of job postings from nearly every industry.

It’s all part of the group’s effort to keep local people in local jobs.

“We’ve got 15,000 people that just don’t know about opportunities here,” Wotton said. “They’re doing that job somewhere else and we could help match them up.”

Haas, a Snoqualmie resident, works for an internationally-based company that recently relocated its Washington office from Bellevue to Fall City and has hired a couple of workers using SnoValley Jobs.

“The best part about it is when you are a business in the Valley, you’d love to hire people who live in the Valley,” he said. “You’re cutting down on traffic, you’re keeping the spending local — it benefits everybody.”

One of the group’s most recent successes is Main Home Solutions, a Fall City construction company started by the father-son duo of Mike and Randy Halim. The company is embracing a series of new technologies including drone photographs for site plans and daily 3D construction updates.

Wotton emphasized that innovation centers are popping up all across the county, with the goal of creating cities that are inviting spaces for new ideas and businesses.

“We’re not novel or unique,” he said. “We’re just trying to make it happen.”

To learn more, visit snovalleyinnovation.com.