If you’re new to the Sacramento area or you’re new to the startup world, you may not be aware of Sacramento’s thriving startup community. The global startup movement is growing and there are a lot of great opportunities to get in on that movement, meet others in the Sacramento startup community, and get involved with the revitalization of our region. Here’s a quick guide to introduce those new to the Sacramento startup scene to how they can get more involved.
1. Sign up for Sacramento Startup Digest
There’s a lot going on here locally in the startup community and the best way to find out about what’s going on is to sign up for Laura Good’s Sacramento Startup Digest. Subscribe and each Monday morning you’ll get the weekly rundown of what’s happening in the Sacramento region’s startup world delivered to your email inbox.
2. Coworking, Incubators, & Accelerators
Coworking spaces, incubators, and accelerators are key components of any successful startup community. In the 2015 Symmetry50.com top coworking spaces list, Sacramento once again had 3 coworking spaces listed in the top 100: Hacker Lab, Capsity, and The Urban Hive, all available 24/7 to members. Additional downtown coworking spaces include Outlet Coworking and The Trade. The announcement of two new incubators/accelerator/coworking spaces downtown, I/O Labs and Velocity Ventures new downtown coworking space, opening in 2016 are signals that many in the Sacramento startup community believe are indicators of promising times ahead in Sacramento’s tech community.
And it’s not just limited to downtown Sacramento. Davis has Pollinate Davis and Area 52 opening in 2016. Hacker Lab recently opened another coworking space in Rocklin. Auburn Tech Incubator recently opened in Auburn and now with the opening of Innogrove, Elk Grove’s new coworking space, Elk Grove joins the Sacramento region. Check out the interactive map below for locations.
3. Monthly Events
There’s no shortage of monthly startup events in Sacramento. In fact the biggest challenge you may find is trying to attend them all. Monthly events include: Startup Grind, Beer and Geeks, monthly meetups for various developers such as Sacramento Javascript, Code for Sacramento Civic Hack nights, Ruby on Rails, Angular JS, and more. How do you find out about and track all of these events? See item #1 above.
4. More Events
In addition to the regular monthly events, Sacramento hosts a number of startup-related events throughout the year. These include: Startup Weekend Sacramento, Health 2.0 Sacramento, TEDx Sacramento, Startup Expo, and several hackathons each year. Again, subscribing to Sacramento Startup Digest is your best way to stay on top of all of these events.
A winning team at a recent Startup Weekend Sacramento event.
These are exciting times in the Sacramento startup community. 2015 has already seen many new interesting developments and 2016 is shaping up to bring even more, so it’s a great time to get involved, whether you’re an entrepreneur with an idea, an investor, an established business, or a supporter of entrepreneurship.
To learn more about the Sacramento startup scene check out the infographic below.
