Startup Talk: SBA announces 2nd national road tour to champion STEM innovation

Editor’s note: Each Thursday, Talk Business & Politics provides “Startup Talk,” a round-up of startup, technology and entrepreneurial news.

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SBA ANNOUNCES 2ND NATIONAL ROAD TOUR TO CHAMPION STEM INNOVATION

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced Monday (March 28) that it will launch a 20-state road tour led by the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs with participation from 11 other federal agencies.

This year’s SBIR Road Tour, “Seeding America’s Future Innovations,” will began on April 4-6 with the first stop at the 2016 Gulf Coast Regional SBIR-STTR conference in New Orleans. The tour continues the week of April 18 with stops in Little Rock, Nashville, Tenn., Atlanta and Greenville, S.C. This will be the second year of the national outreach effort targeting advanced technology communities, including women-owned and minority-owned small businesses in states that have underutilized funding opportunities through these programs. Annually, the SBIR and STTR programs, sometimes called America’s largest seed fund, provides $2.5 billion in early stage funding to small businesses in the STEM fields.

AMAZON OPENS CUSTOMER FULFILLMENT CENTER IN KANSAS; PART OF ONLINE RETAILER’S SUPPLY CHAIN REVAMP

Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. announced plans last week to open a new state-of-the-art fulfillment center in Edgerton, Kan., creating approximately 1,000 full-time hourly positions, plus many managerial and other roles to support the online retail giant’s growing customer fulfillment efforts. Amazon said employees at the 800,000-plus square-foot Edgerton fulfillment center will pick, pack and ship large items to customers such as big-screen televisions, sports equipment or kayaks, for example.

In recent months, Amazon has unveiled parts of its strategy to keep up with the one- and two-day delivery demands of its growing Prime customer base. Part of those plans included a recent announcement to purchase 20 Boeing cargo plans as part of the company’s air cargo network, and efforts to rely less on UPS and FedEx to deliver its goods. In January, the former Seattle startup topped $100 billion in annual sales for the first time.

STARTUP AUTOMAKER TO ROLL OUT NEW TWO-SEATER IN FOURTH QUARTER, 84 MPG CAR TO BE BUILT IN SHREVEPORT

Startup vehicle manufacturer Elio Motors Inc. has announced it plans to sell 100 pre-production, three-wheeled vehicles built at its Shreveport, La., production facility in the fourth quarter of 2016. This limited run of pre-production vehicles, which gets up to 84 miles per gallon (MPG), will be a major step forward for Elio Motors as it works toward mass production, company officials said.

Elio Motors is using nearly 1 million square feet of a nearly 4 million square-foot former General Motors production facility. When Elio Motors reaches full production, it estimates that the Shreveport facility will have nearly 1,500 workers. To date, there are more than 50,000 who have make reservations to purchase the environmentally-friendly vehicle.