Your community
Meet founders, engineers, designers, and mentors at meetups, coffee chats, and demo nights across Greater Gainesville.
Join the community
Start. Build. Grow.
Gainesville’s
Hub for
Founders
Founding a company is hard. Our mission is to accelerate the development of Gainesville’s startup ecosystem. Supporting entrepreneurs as they build and grow is at the heart of everything we do.
Growth doesn’t happen alone
Show up & build
From pitch nights to hack weekends, there is always something on. Find your next event and start shipping.
Browse events
01 / CONNECT
For founders & first-time builders
Pre-idea or pre-seed, plug into a community that has been there before. Find co-founders, mentors, your first ten users, and honest feedback that saves you months.
02 / BUILD
For makers, mentors & investors
Share what you know, host a workshop, judge a pitch night, or find the next great Gainesville startup to back. The ecosystem grows when you give back to it.
We do things differently here
We are the community that starts with people — not with a leaderboard.
Gainesville has always punched above its weight: a top research university, a fiercely loyal town, and a generation of builders who would rather stay and build than leave for the coasts. Startup Gainesville is here to connect all of it.
No gatekeepers, no cover charge. Whether you are a UF student with a side project, a second-time founder, or someone who just moved to town, you belong in the room.
You show up. We do the rest.
“
I moved here for school and stayed for the people. My co-founder, my first hire, and my first check all came from one Startup Gainesville meetup.
Maya R. · Founder, Sabal Health
About us
Startup Gainesville is a community-run initiative for founders and builders in Gainesville, Florida. We are volunteers, operators, students, and mentors who want this town to be the best possible place to start something.
We host the meetups, keep the calendar, make the introductions, and celebrate the wins — from the first commit to the first raise. Whether you are pre-idea or scaling past your first market, we want to help you build it here, in line with your own values.
