Sharing our mission with Congress

The growth in our technology and startup community should be cause for great enthusiasm. Just this summer, we've graduated our first cohort from Startup Life, graduated our third cohort from Code Bootcamp, held a 14 company Technology and Career Fair, organized a 5 city Southeast Startup Challenge with Augusta University where we gave away two $25,000 startup grants, and held a grand opening for our new incubator/accelerator at the Georgia Cyber Center. This level of activity is shining a brighter and brighter spotlight of recognition on the Augusta startup ecosystem at the national level.

A few weeks ago, Congressman Rick Allen's office reached out to theClubhou.se to invite us to participate in a bipartisan Innovation Forum and Showcase organized by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. At the showcase, we were able to meet with staff members for Senator Isakson and Congressman Hice, and we took the opportunity to invite each of them to meet the entrepreneurs that make our community. Chairwoman Foxx and Congressman Allen both came by as well to ask questions about startups at theClubhou.se, our programs, and how the Federal government can help.

The forum gave an opportunity to provide 3 minutes of oral testimony on our mission, successes, and thoughts on how to improve innovation ecosystems, as well as written testimony with no page limit. Here is a video of the testimony given by Eric Parker, with the written testimony viewable at this link. After the forum and showcase, we took the opportunity to meet with the Revolution, the venture fund founded by Steve Case. Fingers crossed on bringing Rise of the Rest to Augusta, and as always, keep us updated on your startup funding needs so we can help connect investors to our community.

Eric Parker testifies for United States House of Representatives committee on Education and the Workforce

Eric Parker and Grace Belangia sharing with Chairwoman Foxx at the Innovation Showcase and Forum