Rhode Island has a wealth of private and governmental partnerships, venture capital, accelerator, and incubator organizations all willing to collaborate with companies within every phase of their growth.

Innovation in Rhode Island

We are home to a multitude of innovative, well-managed office, co-working, and corporate event spaces to support a company's development and growth with collaborators able to assist.

Accelerators & Incubators

We provide assistance with high potential growth start ups. This includes companies that have the potential and seek to scale and expand.

Accelerators

The Harvard Business review defines Accelerators as supporting early-stage, growth-driven companies through education, mentorship, and financing. A startup enters an Accelerator program for a fixed-period of time, and usually as part of a cohort. The accelerator experience is a process of intense, rapid, and immersive education aimed at accelerating the life cycle of innovative companies, compressing years’ worth of learning-by-doing into just a few months. One example is:

• Social Enterprise Greenhouse, in Providence, nurtures inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems that foster just, equitable and resilient communities. SEG serves organizations that strive to do well and do good. They have assisted over 600 businesses and nonprofits that create positive social impact for over 5 million people.

Incubators

Incubators help entrepreneurs solve problems commonly associated with running a startup by providing workspace, seed funding, mentoring, and training. Their sole purpose is to help entrepreneurs grow their business with everything from business basics and etiquette to commercialization and venture capital direction. Here are some of Rhode Island's Incubators:

• Hope & Main, located in Warren, RI is a nationally recognized premier culinary incubator. With over 300 businesses launched, their mission is to empower an inclusive community of entrepreneurs to jumpstart and cultivate a thriving food business that creates a more just, sustainable, and resilient food economy.
• RI Hub serves high growth, high potential companies. Connectors who have the ability to grow quickly and exponentially. RI Hub offers 6 months of free incubation space, Venture Mentoring Services to help you build your business with expert support. One example of available support is working with other similar companies like MassChallenge and organizations that specialize in areas such as materials science, Bio-Science and Medical Tech. The RI Hub takes pride in connecting owners to global corporations headquartered in the US. With the Naval War College located in RI we have a special relationship with the US Navy.

Venture Capital

When you enter the US market, your needs are very different from US companies setting up business. It’s important to understand and work with Venture Capital firms that are eager to work with or advise new companies entering the U.S. market. Venture Capital funds don’t invest the money of their own partners, but that of limited partners such as pension funds, public venture funds, endowments, hedge funds, etc. General partners might invest some of their own money through the fund, but this tends to account for only 1% of the size of the fund.

Venture capital firms are a type of investment firm that fund and mentor startups or other young, often tech-focused companies. Similar to private equity (PE) firms, VC firms use capital raised from limited partners to invest in promising private companies.

Here are a few of Rhode Island’s reputable firms:

• Cherrystone Angel Group - focuses on the healthcare and biotech markets.
• RevUp Capital - specializes in investing in B2B and B2C companies.
• Slater Technology Fund - focuses on seed-stage technology startups.
• Thursday Ventures - is an early-stage tech investor.
• New England Medical Innovation Center (NEMIC) - provides expert support, education, connections to funding, and specialized expertise to innovators and entrepreneurs in the medical technologies space.