Your gift backs Ventura County founders and the program that supports them. It does not leave the county. Local innovation drives local jobs, and that is how we keep our best people here.
The traction so far is real: the City of Ventura invested $49,500 in Startup Ventura through its Economic Development department, our first Annual Benefit brought 75 supporters together and raised $17,000 in one night, and Candid awarded us its 2026 Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level it grants. Programming is free for founders, no tuition and no equity, so every contribution goes toward the workshop series, the Spring 2027 accelerator cohort, and the mentors, events, and investor connections around them.
The calculator above is a planning model, not a report: it estimates what a gift sustains using assumptions you can adjust, like cohort size and program cost. As the first cohort completes the program, this page will grow to track actual outcomes, including founders served, companies launched, jobs created, and follow-on capital raised.