GPEC, StartupAZ partner to bring opportunities and connections to new businesses in the Valley
A new partnership between two Arizona organizations that support startups is bringing more opportunities than ever to new businesses in the Valley.
The Greater Phoenix Economic Council and StartupAZ Collective announced a partnership on June 12, highlighting collaborative efforts to help bring more opportunities to startups in the Valley. The partnership is geared to bring innovative tech-focused businesses resources and connections in a more efficient manner.
GPEC, globally recognized as a top economic development organization, will bring its networking to StartupAZ’s programming, which include its yearly Collective Growth Cohorts, its Freeway performance dashboard program and its events such as the Tech Talent Summits and upcoming global Tech Festival.
“We want to support the acceleration of more startup enterprises, and equally important, more growth companies in Arizona because that’s where jobs come from, more economic impact, and obviously that affects our brand. This particular partnership really references creating dashboards so we can monitor our progress,” said GPEC CEO and President Chris Camacho. “It references our ability to utilize the corporate leaders to engage and support the growth companies as corporate strategics.”
StartupAZ’s Freeway program, which was founded by new Director of Community Daniela Santangelo in 2023, provides an ecosystem-wide performance dashboard that offers visibility for businesses as well as a tool for them to measure progress.
GPEC will ‘amplify and celebrate” StartupAZ’s work
The program helps StartupAZ plan and host talent cultivation events, including the widely-attended Tech Talent Summit in April and the upcoming global Tech Festival in 2025.
“[StartupAZ] will be driving event content that’s genuinely helpful to these startup enterprises. GPEC’s role in that will be to really amplify and celebrate the work and really drive awareness from the corporate community, the academic institutions,” said Camacho.
Along with Freeway, StartupAZ also leverages GPEC’s networking and brand for its StartupAZ Collective program. Every year, StartupAZ selects a handful of companies based on several factors, and the respective founders join together, scale their own companies and help other companies grow. The purpose is to provide opportunities for networking and sharing resources to the company founders, all while inciting competition and innovation for the growing businesses.
“What we envision now is we’re able to get, we think, hundreds of companies, hundreds of growth companies, hundreds of founders more broadly connected to each other, and ultimately more connected to the corporate community,” Camacho said.
There is certainly opportunity in Phoenix, which is well-positioned as a future-focused innovative hub.
“This is new territory for StartupAZ designed to push Greater Phoenix to become the most vibrant and accessible large market startup ecosystem in the country,” said Brandon Clarke, co-founder and chair of StartupAZ, in a statement. “Partnering with GPEC and their high-performance delivery model is exactly what this ecosystem needs.”
Currently, GPEC works with 22 member communities, Maricopa and Pinal counties, and more than 200 private investors. Since being founded in 1989, it has offered support to over 980 companies, created nearly 182,000 jobs, and generated over $65 billion in capital investment.
StartupAZ, meanwhile, was founded in 2015 and has supported more than 120 businesses in their early stages. The nonprofit has raised over $400 million in venture capital funding and has created over 2,500 jobs.