Start Up Waco

Startup Waco is building the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem of central Texas and encouraging members to embrace a culture of innovation by empowering entrepreneurs and innovators to build and grow successful businesses. To achieve this goal, the organization operates a coworking accelerator space in downtown Waco, and delivers programming aimed at three main groups of entrepreneurs: 1. Local business owners, 2. High-growth startups, and 3. Students.

For students, we operated two main programs, one is an advisory program at the baylor university hankamer school of business, and the other is called gxg which began in june of 2022. Gxg is a student-athlete development program that connects business leaders and entrepreneurs to local student-athletes, and works directly with student-athletes to provide business education services, Entrepreneurial support, and financial literacy training. This program is facilitated through a combination of in-person and virtual workshops, seminars and events, and helps provide a foundation to any student-athlete within our service area who is building a business or Entrepreneurial foundation.

For local business owners, the largest program is our weekly entrepreneur networking event called the meetup. Each week, over 50 business owners gather to network and introduce their product or service to the larger community. From insights gained from this program we implement other program to support and address key needs of small business owners in our region.