Two years after launching Irvine’s Innovation Council for startups, Mayor Farrah Khan is looking to set up a resource hub for the city’s emerging entrepreneurs.
“Right now, we’re looking at providing resources for connecting folks to VCs, the SBA, industry experts and those on the Innovation Council, so they can provide their expertise,” Khan told the Business Journal.
The Irvine mayor plans to house the lab in the roughly 4,000-square-foot office and café space at the city’s train station. “This is a temporary space, where we can at least provide those services [as we work to establish] an actual Innovation Lab.”
Executives involved in the project hail from a host of Irvine-based companies, including heart valve maker Edwards Life Sciences Corp. (NYSE: EW), monitoring device company Masimo Corp. (Nasdaq: MASI), master developer FivePoint Holdings LLC (NYSE: FPH), commercial real estate investor IRA Capital and private capital firm Sunstone Management.
Octane, Orange County’s largest tech and medtech business accelerator located on the city line of Irvine and Newport Beach, will also support the development of the lab.
The proposal for the lab was slated for consideration at a city council meeting last week. Khan, however, pushed the item for a meeting this month to add some historical information and data to the memo, she said.
“Folks were talking about how this was going to turn us into Austin, Texas or Silicon Valley,” Khan said in describing the “Misinformation being spread in the community about what the innovation lab was.”
“But I really want them to understand that this has been a long time coming and, at the end of the day, this is reinvesting in our own city and in our own people.”
Innovation Council
The Innovation Lab will be owned by the city, but Khan plans to lease the space in the Irvine train station to the Innovation Council.
The council, founded in late 2021, aims to attract, retain and support high-growth technology businesses to “help position Irvine as a regional hub for innovation and technology,” city officials said at the time of its launch.
Members of the Innovation Council include Costa Mesa-based VC firm CerraCap Ventures CEO Saurabh Ranjan, Edwards Chairman and CEO Mike Mussallem, FivePoint founder and Chairman Emeritus Emile Haddad, Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Co. Senior VP Jeff Davis, Masimo founder, Chairman and CEO Joe Kiani, Octane CEO Bill Carpou, Sunstone Management founder Partner John Shen, UCI Beall Applied Innovation Executive Director Errol Arkilic and UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman.
Irvine Tech Week
Support for startups from Irvine’s city council has seen an uptick this year. The city last month hosted its inaugural Tech Week, which featured five days of panels, presentations and networking events for early-stage entrepreneurs.
The Tech Week, introduced to Irvine city council by Vice Mayor Tammy Kim, aimed to unite local startup-focused organizations that can help early founders jumpstart their businesses.
“One of the common themes I heard during the event was that everyone is doing their own thing,” Kim told the Business Journal. “This is basically the first time to have the entire startup ecosystem under one roof.”
The multi-day event, which Kim estimated drew around 1,000 attendees, “operated on a shoestring budget” and was organized in around two months.
Organizers for next year’s Irvine Tech Week, however, will have much more time. Preparations for the next tech week are already underway. Kim said she hopes to involve local universities, including University of California, Irvine, California State University, Fullerton, Irvine Valley College and Orange-based Chapman University in the event next year.
Participating organizations in this year’s Tech Week included OC chapter of angel investment group Tech Coast Angels, Irvine-based wet lab, medtech incubator University Lab Partners, Laguna Beach-based Okapi Venture Capital, OC Startup Council and Sunstone.
