Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson led his team to victory and broke a few records along the way against the Los Angeles Rams at the LA Memorial Coliseum on November 25.
But it wasn’t the only event to garner excitement in Southern California that night.
A record number of football fans, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and friends of UCI Beall Applied Innovation attended the night’s Startup Scrimmage, the first public event in the new three-story, 100,000-plus-square-foot location of the Cove @ UCI, the home of Applied Innovation.
The Startup Scrimmage event, co-hosted by Executive Next Practices and NextWorks Strategy, is part of a recurring series held on select Mondays during football season. At each event attendees watch the evening’s football game on the massive Hiperwall screen, network and listen to startups pitch their ideas and companies at halftime.
Richard Sudek, Applied Innovation’s executive director and chief innovation officer at UC Irvine, was the event’s emcee, welcoming all to the Cove and showcasing the new space’s upgraded amenities, including the Longboard Lounge, Tiki Bar, and the Beach with its 134-foot-long screen on which the game was shown.
“The Cove is now even better suited to contribute to Orange County’s entrepreneurial and innovation communities,” said Sudek. “With our new space, we will accelerate providing these communities with events and programming to bring more people together to make meaningful connections.”
During halftime, two startups pitched their companies to the audience.
Pitches included Vena Vitals, Inc., a startup that is changing the way blood pressure is monitored by using soft, stretchable sensors that conform to the body and accurately measure arterial pulse, and Amberstone Biosciences, which is developing next-generation immunotherapeutics through proprietary microfluidic-based single-cell technologies.
Additionally, to generate more buzz around the event, four all-inclusive tickets to an upcoming LA Rams home game were raffled off to one lucky attendee at halftime.
Attend the next Startup Scrimmage, visit the Cove at an upcoming event and stay tuned for information on the official grand opening on February 12, 2020.