Supporting Innovation Incubators in the U.S.

As the Space Foundation prepares for its annual Space Technology & Investment Forum (ST&IF) this summer, Chief Operating Officer Shelli Brunswick traveled to Texas to learn more about start-up incubator collaboration in Austin and San Antonio.
 
San Antonio is the second largest cyber community in the U.S., and while cybersecurity is commonly associated with national defense, industries such as banking, have an acute interest in cybersecurity. San Antonio is home to a number of cyber and intelligence companies, as well as defense and financial institutions.
 
In San Antonio, Brunswick toured Geekdom with programs director, Dax Moreno. Geekdom is a collaborative work environment, where entrepreneurs, technologists, developers, makers and creatives work together on business ventures. “Geekdom also houses Build Sec Foundry, Texas’ only incubator focused on launching and scaling new product security startups.” Brunswick met with Build Sec Foundry co-founder, Will Garrett to discuss cyber security initiatives.   
 
In Austin, Brunswick visited Capital Factory, Austin’s Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurship, connecting entrepreneurs with investors and providing startups with accelerator and incubator programs and co-working spaces. She also met with Sabrina Marshall-Wojtewicz and Jonathan Wojtewicz, co-founder of Bunker Labs Austin. Bunker Labs is a national non-profit 501c3 organization created by military veteran entrepreneurs to empower other military veterans as leaders in innovation.
 
While her experiences in the two cities were very different, both pointed to a need to develop a cyber workforce for the future. The Space Foundation is addressing current and future workforce development through its STEM education programs, and through its annual conferences, such as Space Technology & Investment Forum, the Space Symposium and Cyber conferences in Colorado Springs and its Faga Forum on Space Intelligence, held in Washington, D.C.
 
Space Technology & Investment Forum 2017 will be held Aug. 30-31 in San Francisco. ST&IF brings together innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, space industry CEOs and founders of new space startups to identify creative financing solutions to launch new products and services.

Learn more about the Space Technology & Investment Forum 2017 by visiting the web page here.

This article is part of Space Watch: June 2017 (Volume: 16, Issue: 6).