Last week, Governor Glenn Youngkin and GO Virginia granted $6.2 million in grant money for 10 projects across Virginia.
$648,000 are going towards Project Rise, an initiative that gives a boost to startup tech companies in the Roanoke and New River Valley areas.
“Anyone who has an idea, thinks they have an idea, and is interested in how they could take it to the next step,” Kiyah Duffy, Director of Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center, said. “Someone who has started a company and is interested in growing, we want to support you through that.”
Project Rise will help Virginia Tech complete construction on the Entrepreneur Resource Center, which will provide a physical space and virtual tools for young entrepreneurs looking to build their own start-up company.
Thanks to Project Rise, those entrepreneurs can now be awarded with the grants and mentorship they need to get their start-ups off the ground.
Two of them, Campbell Bloomfield - Founder of the Music Advocacy Project - and Eric Pauly - CEO/Co-Founder of Terrace Networks - used the provided space for just that reason.
“Now I have landed on really a tool that helps music venues vet artists as they’re reaching out and as they’re coming through town and understand how many tickets they should be able to sell and what they should price those tickets at,” Bloomfield said.
“Fundamentally, what we are doing is we are using these new AI agents, basically these new large language approaches, to automatically analyze and defend against threats against the public Internet,” Pauly said.
It’s not limited to just Virginia Tech students.
Hokie or not, the ERC will keep its doors open for anybody.
Duffy hopes that - with the proper support - these start-up companies can be the catalyst for growth and prosperity.
“So if we are successful, we will see a growth in the number of jobs. We will see economic development,” Duffy said. “We will see companies growing and staying in our region.”
The ERC will be fully launched in the first quarter of 2026.