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Crowdfunding Festival Creating A Startup City

Jacksonville is becoming known more and more as a U.S. city cultivating entrepreneurship and innovation, largely due to the One Spark crowdfunding festival and the guiding force behind its creator Elton Rivas.

Rivas is an entrepreneur who started CoWork Jax and Zero Confines, a consultancy that helps new businesses launch in Jacksonville. Through this experience, Rivas and others created One Spark – a festival that helps startups and projects in Jacksonville get off the ground. 

This year’s festival in April raised more than $350,000. A portion was distributed to creators as a percentage of the public vote and the remaining funds were awarded to winning recipients in different categories.  The festival serves as both a non-profit and a holding company where the intellectual property lives.

The goal for One Spark is to expand the festival to other markets, similar to how TED conferences have evolved with TEDx in cities across the U.S as outlined in the Forbes article.