Last week my Digest co-curator and StartupSac cofounder, Jeff Bennett, published his assessment on how Sacramento’s key elements for a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem stack up against the benchmarks drafted by the Kauffman Foundation in their ESHIP Summit Playbook. The elements include Entrepreneurs, Talent, Knowledge and Resources, Champions, Onramps, Intersections, Stories, and Culture. Overall, we are making great strides. Please give it a read and let us know what you think about how our region measures up.
This Week’s Best Bets
Wednesday morning join 1 Million Cups downtown at Impact Venture Capital for coffee and a look at two new startups. This weekly meetup is a frequent hangout for a couple dozen early stage startup founders. It’s not just about the presentations, the real value is in the relationships that are forming in our founder community.
Thursday evening, CleanStart is kicking of its new program, the Cleantech Meetup. This monthly gathering of the cleantech community will feature technology talks from local companies and will also be a fantastic opportunity to strengthen the network. This first one is free, so don’t miss out! The focus will be on energy management technologies.
Yolo County folks! Heads up! Thursday evening, Startup Grind is conquering the causeway and bringing you a free event that will feature a fireside chat with Chris Johnson, founder of Rapid Brands (remember when he pitched the Rapid Ramen cooker on Sharktank?). The City of Davis is hosting the event at the Hunt Boyer House.
Plan Ahead
Next week, on Jan 31, StartupSac Happy Hour is back! We’re gathering at Hot Italian, and yes! there will be free pizza! Our AMA guest is Brandon Salzberg, cofounder and VP of Engineering at Rhombus Systems. Brandon is a serial entrepreneur with Sacramento roots who recently relocated his company to our region.
The Startup Weekends are coming! The Startup Weekends are coming! Not one but TWO Startup Weekends are happening in our region in February! The Women’s Edition happens Feb 9-11 in Downtown Sacramento and the Rocklin Startup Weekend is Feb 23-25 at Hacker Lab in Rocklin. Use code “digest” for either and get a whopping 35% off admission price!
There’s lots of great stuff going on in the tech startup community–check out the details in this week’s Startup Digest. If you’d like to receive the digest in your inbox every Monday morning, sign up for free here. If you’ve organized (or know about) an event we have not included, please submit it here for consideration. And for even more startup information, happenings and resources, visit the StartupSac Website. Note: We include a lot of tech events that aren’t necessarily startup-focused on the event calendar on the StartupSac website. Check it out here.
