University of Central Florida
(a former 2011 i6 Green grantee and also a 2014 RIS i6 Challenge grantee)

The StarterCorps Fund will directly address the critical gap in seed funding that is the largest barrier faced by Central Florida’s technology entrepreneurs.  The region directly served by the StarterCorps Seed Fund will be the 5-county Central Florida region that includes Orange, Seminole, Brevard, Osceola, and Volusia counties.  UCF will set up the StarterCorps fund structure, in the first six months raise a minimum of $1,000,000, which is enough to fund twelve companies through the first year, and will ultimately raise, deploy, and manage a $5 million evergreen StarterCorps Seed Fund that will be launched in innovative technology and advanced manufacturing startups in Central Florida.

StarterCorps’s evergreen fund structure means all investment profits will be returned to the fund to be redeployed in future investments.  StarterCorps will provide equity-based funding in a series of milestone-based investments.  Milestones will be based on a team’s aggressive progress in transforming commercially viable prototypes (which were developed in Starter Studio and I-Corps programs) into viable technology companies that gain early market traction, have a complete founding team (business and technical skills), secure IP, and can prove they are addressing an urgent market opportunity.