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May 07, 2023 | Tom Ballard

Applications open for this summer’s “Cultivate Appalachia Bootcamp”

The program, scheduled for July 10-13, is designed for food and agtech entrepreneurs throughout Southern Appalachia who are still in the early stages of their business growth and investment.

Applications are now being accepted for the annual “Cultivate Appalachia Bootcamp” designed for food and agriculture entrepreneurs.

Scheduled for July 10-13 in Knoxville, the weeklong program is a joint effort between Memphis-based AgLaunch, The Biz Foundry in Cookeville, the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center, and Sync Space in Kingsport.

Those interested can click here to apply. The deadline is May 31.

The “Cultivate Appalachia Bootcamp” is part of the U.S. Small Business Administration-funded Appalachian AgriFood Regional Innovation Cluster which is designed to foster ag and food innovation, agtech development, and value-added opportunities across the seven-state region of Southern Appalachia. It is one of four AgLaunch boot camps being held this year. The others include two in-person and a third that is virtual.

  • “Cultivate Oregon,” an in-person boot camp set for May 15-19 and conducted in partnership with Strategic Economic Development Corporation for start-ups located in the Northwest U.S.;
  • “AgLaunch Catalyst,” a virtual opportunity scheduled for June 13-16 and focused on early-stage ag and food start-ups.; and
  • “Cultivate Oklahoma,” also in-person June 27-30 and offered in partnership with the Oklahoma Farm Bureau for Oklahoma-based agtech start-ups.

“Cultivate Appalachia is designed for food and agtech entrepreneurs throughout Southern Appalachia who are still in the early stages of their business growth and investment,” said Kyle Hensley, the newly named Regional Innovation Cluster Lead. “Entrepreneurs will not only have the opportunity to work directly with ag experts, but this will set them up for follow-on programming and introduce them to the AgLaunch
farmer-led model of innovation.”

The boot camps are a pathway for entrepreneurs to apply to advanced AgLaunch programming. One of those is the “AgLaunch365 Accelerator” which covers a full range of business coaching, mentorship, investor connections, and access to AgLaunch’s farmer network for early customer discovery and proof of concept farm trials.


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