Startup Tucson was founded in 2012 on the heels of one of the first Startup Weekends in Tucson. Since that time, the innovation community has grown tremendously with more funding, support organizations, accelerators, and incubators popping up every year.

 

Startup Tucson has continued to serve as an advocate, educator, and connector for entrepreneurs. We serve over 3,000 entrepreneurs each year with over 300 active members in our network membership.  Our alumni have brought over 44 million dollars of investment and over 400 new jobs in the short years since our founding. 

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Startup Tucson is also the founding organization of TENWEST Impact Festival, a festival celebrating the intersection of innovation, culture, technology, and social impact. The festival grew to 14,000 attendees in 2019 and continues to be a central hub of thought-leadership in Southern Arizona. 

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In recent years, Startup Tucson has continued to mature as an organization, building customized programs to serve the needs of a wide variety of entrepreneurs, including creative, food, and small businesses.  Our positioning at “the front of the funnel” helps us attract entrepreneurs and then connect them to the resources, mentors, or organizations that best fit their needs.

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We focus intentionally on creating broad, inclusive services to bring more diversity into the innovation pipeline.  We work collaboratively across the innovation ecosystem to lift up and support our partners, with the collective goal of inspiring and elevating entrepreneurs to create and innovate in order to build a more equitable, vibrant, and forward-looking economy.