Made in the 956: Brownsville non-profit helping entrepreneurs

May 7, 2024

34 1 minute read

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A Rio Grande Valley non-profit is teaming up with NASA for a unique opportunity.

The non-profit is called Expanding Frontiers, a tech incubator out of Brownsville. Their mission is to help local entrepreneurs develop and launch their businesses using space and energy technologies.

Expanding Frontiers is kicking off a six-month program next month called The NASA Tech Trek.

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“So with the NASA Tech Trek, what we’re aiming to do is to help streamline the process of people, of entrepreneurs, starting up their businesses, and so we want to show people the opportunities that are involved with using NASA tech for your business,” Expanding Frontiers member William Brown said. “We want to get them some experience in case they don’t have a business background or haven’t done something similar. So the way we’re accomplishing this is by hosting a kick-off event where they can talk to panelist and speakers about these activities and then right after that, we’re going to have some workshops and hackathons so they can get familiar with the NASA technology and get their business idea going, work with a team to develop it, and then meet with mentors from the industry as well and then as they build up those ideas, in November they’ll finally be able to pitch those ideas to investors to get some funding to launch their business.”

Best of all, Brown says this program is free and open to anyone.

“This program has the potential to be very innovative, not only for people interested in entrepreneurship, but for the Valley, for South Texas. This is the only program of its kind in Texas, so the fact that NASA is reaching out to us to do something like this I feel is very groundbreaking because NASA is showing an interest in South Texas, and they’re reaching out to us to lead this program, and they want our people to get involved with that,” Brown said.