Davis Roots

 

Address

604 2nd St, Davis, CA 95616

Hours

(No office hours. Please contact [email protected] for questions)

Phone

+1 (530) 297-6687

Website

http://www.Davisroots.org/

Executive Directors

(Anthony Costello, Joe Dinunzio, and Andrew Hargadon)

Founders

(Andy Hargadon and Anthony Costello)

Tax ID

(452388920)

Established

(March 2012)

Davis Roots

Davis Roots is a non-profit start-up business accelerator.

Founded by Andy Hargadon and Anthony Costello, with the shared goal of fostering the formation and early development of new high-growth ventures.

How Does It Work?

Emerging ventures (typically 1-3 founders that may or may not have incorporated yet) apply for and are selected into the Davis Roots mentoring program. In the mentoring program, they gain access to our mentor network and are supported in preparing a more detailed 9-month launch strategy, which includes project and funding milestones.

Once the launch strategy is completed and their plan is accepted, new ventures are given office space within Davis Roots for a designated period of time. At the end of their time designated time, ventures that raise external funding are provided assistance in finding Davis office space to continue their growth in town. Ventures that fail to meet milestones or raise funding on a timely basis exit the office space.

Davis Roots will take a small equity investment in each accepted venture. Ventures that succeed provide value which feeds back into ongoing support for the program.

The Numbers

Davis Roots is targeting inquiries from approximately 30-40 companies. From this pool, a smaller set are admitted into the mentoring program and helped to develop a formal application.

They expect to offer admission to 10 ventures to Davis Roots, for a steady state of approximately 8-10 Davis Roots companies per year.

From these, it is expected that four are to be funded and grow to 5+ employees. 1 in 20 of these will create significant returns.

Other Activities of Davis Roots

Davis Roots engages in a range of other activities intended to support and connect the city and campus entrepreneurial communities. These activities include:

-Hosting a number of UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship activities downtown, connecting the campus and city entrepreneurial communities.

-Helping connect local ventures with local advisors, mentors, and potential investors.

-Helping raise local investment capital.

-Helping to bring together, and grow, the local entrepreneurial workforce.

-Bringing in companies and visitors who will directly benefit downtown businesses and contribute positively to the Davis community.

Events

http://davisroots.org/events/

Check the calendar and call them to find out what's going on!  There have been numerous past events.

 

Highlights of 2014:

1. Davis Roots are hosting a series of speaker events featuring Davis and Sacramento entrepreneurs called "Where are they now?". The talks highlights their own journey to success and give tips to aspiring entrepreneurs on how to move their companies in the right direction.
2. Davis Roots is offering introductory programming and graphic design classes that are open to anyone who wants to learn.

Davis Roots Summer of Code and Design 2014

All of our classes are taught by industry professionals with degrees in the fields they're teaching. That way the classes can encompass both the theoretical and practical aspects of programming and design. The goal with both of these intro classes is to teach you practical skills as well as how to learn more advanced programming and design skills in the future.

Intro to Graphic Design (Sundays from 10-5pm): Students will learn the fundamentals of graphic design as well as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The class will have homework that students will be expected to complete before the next class. Make sure to bring your own laptop with Adobe Creative Cloud set up. This class will be taught by Deena Freel, a UC Davis Graphic Design Alumni and designer at iMOS and Coffee and Cigarettes Clothing Company. She has three years of professional graphic design experience across multiple fields.

Intro to Python and Programming (Saturdays from 10-5pm): Students will learn to program in Python and learn the fundamentals of programming which will help them learn more advanced programming languages in the future. The class will have homework and students are required to bring their own laptop to every class session. The class will be taught by Mikel Mcdaniel, a UC Davis Computer Science Alumni and programmer at Google. Mikel also has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Brandeis University.

Intro to Web Development:   If you've ever wanted to learn how to build a website or web application look no farther! Our Intro to Web Development course will teach you how to build and modify websites in JavaScript. Using JavaScript you can transform static HTML pages into dynamic interactive pages. With JavaScript, a graphic image of a clock can be replaced with a working clock and a plain, boring button can be transformed into one that, when users interact with it, changes color, size or just about anything imaginable! Creating web pages with JavaScript does not require a super computer or speciality software so its capabilities are readily accessible. Basically a computer user needs word processing or text editing software coupled with a web browser.

Our teacher for this course, Judy Fong, is a UC Davis Computer Science graduate with prior experience coaching girls robotics teams and founding the UC Davis Computer Science tutoring class. She's a great programmer and teacher who brings tons of energy and experience to the program.

Since this is an intro class no prior programming experience is needed. All students need to do is bring their own laptop to class and be ready to learn!