North Idaho entrepreneur Nicholas Smoot arrested under suspicion of domestic battery

Coeur d’Alene entrepreneur Nicholas R. Smoot, who has gained attention for his work in bringing an internet startup culture to North Idaho, was arrested Wednesday under suspicion of domestic battery.

Arrest records say Smoot, 35, was taken into custody at his downtown Coeur d’Alene condo in the Parkside Building on Front Avenue. A Coeur d’Alene police spokesman was not immediately available Thursday for comment on what Smoot specifically is accused of committing.

His wife Kenna said Thursday that the incident had been overblown.

“As a strong mother and community advocate against violence, I would never allow myself to stay in an abusive situation,” she wrote in an email message. “Nick is a huge leader in this community and advocates for better engaged citizens. I can assure you he is not a violent person and would never hurt me. This is a misunderstanding and it will be resolved soon.”

The arrest is Smoot’s second in three years. In 2015, according to court records, Smoot was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence without traumatic injury. A year later, the charges were dropped by the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office.

Smoot has made significant waves in the North Idaho tech industry since 2014, when he founded Innovation Collective – a company that offers training and resources for workers looking to find a career in a “future economy” that will “likely need fewer workers at lower wages due to the technological advances of robotics, automation, and machine learning,” according to the company’s website.

Since then, he’s launched multiple phone applications, according to a story in the Coeur d’Alene Press, that are no longer downloadable on the Apple iPhone’s App Store.

In 2017, he and two partners purchased Coeur d’Alene’s old Elks Club, which had long been an eyesore to residents, and spent about $1.2 million in renovations. He later named the building the Innovation Den, turning it into office space designed for startup companies, complete with its own coffee shop.

He’s also delivered a handful of seminars on the topic of a future workforce dominated by robots taking human jobs, including a speech he delivered at a TEDxSpokane talk in October 2017.

In May, he delivered the keynote address at Alaska Airlines’ Imagine Tomorrow conference at Washington State University.