ExCITE Riverside announced it would hold several events, the detail of which is as follows:

• March 17 at 5:30 pm – Founder’s Night (& St Patrick’s Day) led by Verious Smith, founder of Startempire Wire
• March 31 at 5:30 pm – (TENTATIVE) – Grand opening for ExCITE and Riverside Angel Summit Check Presentations.
• April 7 at 5:30 pm – Riverside Regional Pitch Competition at ExCITE – First place will get $2,500 + opportunity to pitch in the Finale!
• April 13 at 8:30 am – Coffee with Startups (like 1millioncups) led by Thomas Hrouda (Friends of Entrepreneurs Meetup group)
• April 26 at 5:30 pm – Techo Tuesday: Intro to NFTs – Ty Smith (Founder of Coinbound, ExCITE company) led by Chris Hernandez and Mike Ortiz
• April 27 in Temecula — Fast Pitch Finale! Winners from regional pitch competitions will be participating in the Finale event! Shout out to Blue Social, who is a past Finale winner!

ExCITE Riverside is also utilizing the Slack community EPIC SBDC Director Scott Brovsky developed and named LongSoCal!

We Covered this in our Weekly Wire Roundup

What is ExCITE?

The ExCITE program collaborates with UCR Extension, City, and the County. The ExCITE program is an entrepreneurship development program developed to help local businesses grow.

The ExCITE Riverside Program is funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) for economic development in the City of Riverside, County of Riverside, and surrounding areas.

The program is designed to provide small business owners and entrepreneurs with the support to start or expand their businesses in the Inland Empire region.

The program provides the following:

• Educational seminars.
• Workshops.
• One-on-one counseling.
• Other technical assistance services are designed to assist prospective and existing business owners in building successful businesses in the region.

These services are provided for free to participants.

Shoutout to StarNav 

StarNav, an ExCITE company, expanded its team with its recent hires! They have also been awarded a $750k DoD contract, with more on the way!

Welcoming 4th Sector Innovations

4th Sector Innovations has recently joined as a community partner for ExCITE! They will outfit the Community Partner office at ExCITE (the large office near the Ping Pong table) and provide programming and resources to ExCITE companies.