First Flight, RIoT, and KickStart Venture Services each win a $50,000 SBA prize

RALEIGH – Three Triangle organizations were selected as winners of the Small Business Association’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC) and will receive a $50,000 prize, the SBA announced this week.

The First Flight Venture Center, RIoT and its RIoT Accelerator Program, and KickStart Venture Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were each selected as winners.

“We are excited to have been awarded $50,000 to support science and SBIR research-based startups,” said Tom Synder, executive director of RIoT. “Specifically, we will use this funding to better support underrepresented minority founders and companies that hail from rural communities that surround the Triangle.”

“We will do this through new short-form informational and educational programming across the region that will serve as an on-ramp to established complementary programs like Project LiftOff at First Flight Venture Center and the RIoT Accelerator Program,” Synder said.

According to the SBA, each winner of the GAFC is an accelerator or incubator that proposed “targeted assistance to STEM/R&D entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, rural, and veteran entrepreneurs.”

The 2021 submission period was May 26, 2021 until July 2, 2021, and competitors submitted a presentation and a 90-second video describing their plan for allocating the funding, should they be selected as a winner.

Those applications were then judged from experts in the public and private sector who had demonstrated experience in early-stage investment, entrepreneurship, academic, startups, or economic development, the SBA said.

Here are the videos from each selected North Carolina recipient.