Twilio acquires SendGrid for $2 billion in stock

Congrats to University of California, Riverside alums and all around cool guys Tim Jenkins and Elmer Thomas on the $2B acquisition of their company SendGrid by Twilio. Thanks for all you do for our Riverside and Inland Empire tech startup ecosystem.

Twilio acquires email API platform SendGrid for $2 billion in stock

EPIC SBDC Panel on Startup Scaling and Fundraising a success

We had a strong turnout of Inland Empire entrepreneurs for our EPIC SBDC panel discussion at The Box Theater at Inland Empire Startup Week on October 2nd. Our region and our entrepreneurs are truly grateful for these investors and entrepreneurs who took the time out of their busy schedules to come talk to us about fundraising and scaling startups:
Brent Granado, Managing Partner, Sway Ventures
Dr. Eamonn Keogh , Co-Founder, FarmSense
Mike Krebs, Angel Investor, Pasadena Angels
Tim Jenkins, Co-Founder and former CTO, SendGrid
Also, congrats to Tim on the announcement of his next big thing!
Get in touch if you want to learn more about what is happening in our growing startup ecosystem in the IE and at UC Riverside.

UC Riverside Startup and ExCITE Incubator Resident BEAM-CA Receives National Science Foundation Grant

More great news for our growing Riverside and Inland Empire tech ecosystem. Congratulations to Alexander Khitun, a research professor of electrical and computer engineering in UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering and founder of BEAM-CA, on being awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant for $149,000 to conduct research and development work on a novel type of sensitive, robust magnetometer that operates at room temperature. BEAM-CA is a resident at the ExCITE Incubator in Riverside and is being mentored by our team at UCR’s EPIC SBDC. Read more details in Holly Ober‘s article here.
For the entrepreneur, non-dilutive SBIR funding can be a good way to help you build your product, get early traction and work on achieving product/market fit. This can put your tech startup in a better position to be able to raise Angel and Seed capital as you scale. If you want to learn more about potential SBIR funding from the USDA for your startup, be sure to register for our workshop (with free lunch) on July 26th on campus. Learn more here.

SmartBot360 is looking to hire for two positions

SmartBot360 is looking to hire for two positions: a Full-Stack Developer and a Business Development Officer. Vagelis Hristidis and his team have developed a platform to create, manage and share AI chatbots. The platform empowers customer agents to increase the number of reached customers by offloading routine interactions to the AI-powered chatbots.

Chatbots and humans work together through easy to define triaging handover protocols. The intuitive Web-based SmartBot360 Management Dashboard is the control panel of the

SmartBot360 is mentored by the team at University of California, Riverside‘s EPIC SBDC and is a resident at the ExCITE incubator in Riverside, CA.

More here: https://angel.co/smartbot360/jobs

EPIC SBDC Launch Event April 3rd

Inland Southern California entrepreneurs – come and join us on April 3rd as we celebrate entrepreneurs and innovation at the launch of our new tech Small Business Development Center called EPIC SBDC. EPIC SBDC provides early stage tech entrepreneurs and companies in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties support to grow their businesses at no cost. Services include specialized consulting, training programs, access to capital and SBIR/STTR assistance. It is hosted and supported by University of California Riverside, Riverside County, the Orange County Inland Empire SBDC Network, the State of California and the Small Business Administration. Register here.

 

Sensorygen raises up to $500K from UC Riverside’s Highlander Fund

Congrats to Tom Stone, Anand Ray and the team at Sensorygen on your funding round from UC Riverside’s Highlander Venture Fund. This is a big win for our growing Inland Southern California tech startup scene as our talented entrepreneurs and researchers at UC Riverside start to get noticed by VCs.

Female founders in Riverside County

Excited to have Dali Rivera from Sticks and Stones be one of the 7 startups to join our Startups for Innovators program in partnership with UC Riverside at the Temecula Valley Entrepreneurs Exchange (TVE2). We need more female founders in Riverside County.

UC Riverside’s Highlander Venture Fund Launches

In case you missed the big announcement – UC Riverside has launched the Highlander Venture Fund – a $10M venture capital fund that will make seed capital investments on campus and in regional startups. If you want more info, please get in touch with me if you are an entrepreneur in the Riverside County region.
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/48185

Knobbe Martens talks protecting your Intellectual Property @ The MIC

A huge thank you to Russell Jeide and Scott Cromar from Knobbe Martens as well as the entrepreneurs for coming out to the Murrieta Innovation Center (The MIC) to talk about “Intellectual Property and your Startup” this week. We hope to deliver more Lunch & Learns to Riverside County in the coming months. If there are other topics relevant to your startup you want us to cover, get in touch with me.

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