Fostering entrepreneurship "Survivor style"

Northern California WIRED Region

Modeled on a popular reality television show, Venture Island | Chico provides a field of innovative, start-up and early-stage growth companies in the Northern California WIRED region a chance to compete for executive mentoring and advice, not to mention visibility and a cash prize.  Adapting a well-known model, this initiative helps foster entrepreneurship, which in turn will create jobs in the WIRED region.

Once a month contestants visit Venture Island to compete on a variety of mission-critical business topics.  The judges are successful local entrepreneurs, who ask the contestants challenging questions on their business ventures and impart advice to the contestants and audience.  The eight budding entrepreneurs are all seeking to be crowned the "Big Kahuna" of Venture Island.  The potential payoff is a $50,000 infusion of funds. (Please note that no WIRED grant funds are used for the cash prize.)

The monthly challenges serve as a celebration of entrepreneurship.  They have become a "can't miss" peer-to-peer networking event for area entrepreneurs, CEOs, technologies, executives, investors and others seeking to build the next-wave of market-leading companies in the Chico area.

More information on Venture Island is available at: http://www.chico.venturecommunities.com/