The first annual Startup Day hosted by the Rhode Island Coalition of Entrepreneurs is being hailed as a huge success that will only help the volunteer-led group gain more traction.
The event garnered more than 100 attendees who attended a number of sessions on topics chosen by RICE’s membership roster of startup founders and CEOs in Rhode Island.
“The goal for Rhode Island Startup Day has been to provide insight and knowledge to both new entrepreneurs and those running existing startups in our state,” Pat Sabatino, CEO of Datarista and executive director of RICE, told Rhode Island Inno. “When we set out to plan this we had always said if we can get 50 interested attendees it would be a big success. The fact that we more than doubled that number was amazing.”
The day started with opening remarks from Dr. David Dooley, president of the University of Rhode Island, who provided comments on how URI, the URI SPARC business engagement center and URI Ventures see a growing opportunity to partner with startups in the state.
Then Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza spoke during lunch about the need now more than ever to engage with the local community.
Sessions throughout the day included storytelling; fundraising and crowdsourcing basics; accounting and legal musts; design thinking; human resources and getting the culture right; running the startup and dealing with failure.
Sabatino said RICE is planning to send out a follow up survey to all attendees to get feedback on how to make next year's event even better.
RICE first launched in November of 2017 in order to gather a critical mass of the Ocean State’s entrepreneurs, encourage collaboration and create a cohesive community for innovators.
The mission statement of RICE says the organization will strive to be an entrepreneurial catalyst by aggregating resources, talent and networks, as well physical, intellectual and financial capital to assist new companies, which will in turn lead to more employment within the state.
The organization has backing from the City of Providence and the state, and believes it can help spread awareness on the 130 plus startups in the Ocean State.
The next goal for RICE is to begin working on an economic impact study on the value of startups to the Rhode Island’s economy. Sabatino said the organization already has several resources and potential partners that it is talking to and hopes to be able to provide an update on this project by the end of the summer.
