Durham’s American Underground is one of only seven “Google for Entrepreneurs” tech hubs in the U.S. That connection is helping drive up the hype meter for the next Underground location.
American Underground @Raleigh formally opens its doors Wednesday evening at 213 Fayetteville Street, and a pair of Google executives who work with startups will be in the crowd.
Mary Grove, director of Google for Entrepreneurs, and Bridgette Beamer, who will be making a presentation to entrepreneurs in Durham on Thursday, are scheduled to be at Wednesday’s party, which beings at 5:30 p.m.
@Raleigh already has 13 tenants, some of which began moving in at Christmas time.
The Underground, which is operated by WRALTechWire parent company Capitol Broadcasting, already has shared office facilities for startups at the American Tobacco Historic District and @Main in downtown Durham.
“We’ve seen the tremendous importance of physical space in bringing startup communities together,” said Grove about Google’s commitment to startup hubs.
“We’ve been excited to help connect communities across different cities with the Google for Entrepreneurs North American Tech Hub Network. Our team has been incredibly impressed with the great work these hubs have done in their cities, and are excited to continue partnering with them to do even more. In Raleigh and Durham, there is concentration of talent and our goal is to support American Underground in fostering the vibrant community here.”
Last September, the company selected Durham along with Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Waterloo, Canada, as cities in which Google for Entrepreneurs will partner with pre-existing entrepreneurial resources, Grove said at the time.
The two-year partnership is designed to provide the Triangle’s entrepreneurs greater access to Google products, talent, and developer kits.
Google is planning to roll out quarterly events, where they’ll demonstrate new products as well as monthly developer meetings to provide entrepreneurs the opportunity to interact with Google’s developers to sharpen and hone their coding ability.
In addition, each American Underground tenant will receive a Google software pack that contains discounts and free products and licenses.
Beamer’s presentation Thursday topic is: “Being a Data Driven Founder.” She will be talking at the @Main location.
Underground@Raleigh will host BandwidthLabs, which is the incubator group set up by Raleigh-based Bandwidth. The company operates Republic Wireless and offers a variety of networking related services across the U.S.
