Home to Innovation

Built by the coast and powered by connection, this is where Santa Cruz County’s brightest minds, startups, and businesses find their home. Whether you’re scaling a startup or seeking to expand your company, Santa Cruz Works can help you build the future together.

Our Mission

Santa Cruz Works accelerates innovation in Santa Cruz County by empowering startups, supporting talent, and connecting businesses with the capital, mentorship, and partnerships that fuel success.

Our Vision

We envision Santa Cruz County as a vibrant hub where businesses thrive, talent flourishes, and innovation knows no bounds, creating a sustainable and collaborative community for all. And of course, make commuting over the hill for work unnecessary.

Who We Serve

Entrepreneurs

From finding experienced mentors and team members to validating ideas and accessing capital, we provide the essential resources, access to $1m+ in perks, offer exciting events to gain your startup exposure to investors, and a robust accelerator program to skyrocket your startup’s journey.

Employers

From building talent pipelines, staying on top of industry trends, solving business problems, shining the spotlight on your company to accessing paid internships, capital, and exclusive discounts, we provide the network, exclusive CEO events, and platform to share your opportunities and scale your business locally.

Community

We help both individuals and organizations expand their network through hosting collaborative events, sharing job opportunities, and featuring your stories in our weekly newsletter to our growing innovation community.

See More Benefits

Our Impact

  • Supporting Local Employers

    Santa Cruz Works provides local startups and companies with $10,000 each to fund internships, hosts 10 monthly meetups a year for CEOs to connect and learn, and has helped countless employers build their workforce pipelines ensuring businesses have the local talent they need to grow.

  • Empowering Entrepreneurs

    Through the Santa Cruz Accelerates program, over 50 early-stage founders have connected with local mentors, completed self-paced courses, and gained access to capital and scale their ideas into million dollar ventures. See our portfolio here.

  • Building a Robust Network

    We host several community events throughout the year that serve as a low-barrier way for professionals, students, and curious neighbors to meet the startups and people behind the county's most innovative companies and impactful programs. In 2025, we had over 1,500 people attend our events and 8,000+ newsletter subscribers!

  • Growing and Connecting Talent

    Each year we bring together 400+ job seekers and 25+ local employers for Santa Cruz Launchpad and we’ve connected countless people to opportunities via our jobs board, internship program, and community mixers.

  • Providing Executive Support

    Through our CEO Works Luncheons, hundreds of local leaders have an avenue for gaining advice from peers, solving business challenges together, learning new skills, staying on top of trends, all while fostering a collaborative rather than competitive business environment.

About Our Region

Successful Santa Cruz County companies include…

Jane Technologies

Santa Cruz Bicycles

Human Genome Project

Verdagy

Jane Technologies

FullPower AI

Ohalo Genetics

Oxford Nanopore

Versa Vascular

Unnatural Products

Capstan Medical

Netflix

Joby Aviation

Seagate

Verve Coffee

Goodles

Prometheus Fuels

Climatize

Looker

Ambient Photonics

Paystand

Future Motion

Farm-NG

Life Aid

Borland

MagArray

Driscoll's Berries

Cruz Foam

Peregrine Hydrogen

Olipop

Jane Technologies Santa Cruz Bicycles Human Genome Project Verdagy Jane Technologies FullPower AI Ohalo Genetics Oxford Nanopore Versa Vascular Unnatural Products Capstan Medical Netflix Joby Aviation Seagate Verve Coffee Goodles Prometheus Fuels Climatize Looker Ambient Photonics Paystand Future Motion Farm-NG Life Aid Borland MagArray Driscoll's Berries Cruz Foam Peregrine Hydrogen Olipop

Market Size

600+

Tech businesses in Santa Cruz county per the City of SC Economic Development 2014 census.

$30B+

Market value generated by tech businesses in Santa Cruz county - excluding Netflix.

10,222+

Commuters driving the Hill every day to San Francisco. We strive to reduce the loss of productivity when commuting.

6.0

Multiplier. For every tech job, 5 more jobs are created in other local goods and services sector.

Community. Collaboration.

Inspiration.

Join Our Community Today!

Become a Member