Comstock's magazine 0619 - June 2019 | Page 86

Proud to contribute to community developments making Elk Grove a quality place to live, work, recreate and educate. Retreats at Valley Hi East Elk Grove Specific Plan East Franklin Specific Plan Franklin/Johnson and Pleasant Grove/Albiani High School-Middle School Sites SOUTHEAST POLICY AREA • Southeast Business Park • Souza Dairy Mixed Use Development 11249 Gold Country Blvd., Ste. 190, Gold River, CA 95670 916.631.8440 www.kamilos.com Follow us @COMSTOCKSMAG For your chance to win visit our instagram for details 86 comstocksmag.com | June 2019 For SensorTransport founder and CEO Rob Haney, that support and community is even more valuable to a startup than financial incentives. “To have the city back you up is just terrific. When you’re just a PowerPoint [presentation] and an idea, having ac- cess to InnoGrove and an ecosystem — to me, the ecosystem is more important than the money,” Haney says. “I was sur- prised that Elk Grove did this program. It’s very forward-looking, and there’s no reason a tech startup couldn’t be here.” Doan agrees, which is why he be- lieves Elk Grove doesn’t need to be- come the next Silicon Valley to appeal to startups. “We’re not trying to become Silicon Valley or something that we’re not. We’re a bedroom community of Sacramento. That’s who we are and who we want to be, but we want to do it at a higher level,” he says, adding that the generation most associated with startups, millennials, might even prefer the sleepy suburb to the fast-paced city. “Millennials are getting old now. They might have kids, they might even have a minivan, and they might not want that Bay Area lifestyle anymore, and maybe they want to settle down,” Doan says. That perhaps is the greatest advan- tage a suburban environment has over Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. The city of Elk Grove is banking on it. n Jordan Venema is a California-based writer who enjoys gin and teaching himself dead languages. He received a master’s of liber- al arts from St. John’s College, but swears he’s learned more from his precocious son, Cassian, than he ever did from a book.