Orange County is Building a Start-up Empire

Recently, there has been an increasing effort to create a meeting place for entrepreneurs and investors to gather in Orange County. Like its neighbors in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, Orange County is looking to build a start-up culture that will grow businesses outside of the existing health and hardware companies.

The county has a strong start up community with $722M granted by venture capitalists this year, but it seems like pocket change when compared to the $23 billion dollar tab of Silicon Valley. To get OC up to speed, The Beall Family Foundation, a philanthropy that has contributed generously to University of California, Irvine (UCI) gave a $5 million endowment to open The Cove.

The Cove is a 31,000 square feet space that boasts seven investment firms, all of whom are willing to transform a start-up from pitch to existence. Additionally, business advisory firms offer free assistance and UCI’s Applied Innovation institute is a part of the mix to bring university technologies to the market.

Hopefully, these efforts can help to spread the Silicon Valley set-up further south.