Category Archives: Cruzio Blog

Happy Friday!

Hi Santa Cruzians!

Happy Friday! Here are some cool things happening in the area this weekend.

1. Santa Cruz Garage Sale is happening May 30th and 31st

Garage Sales

The City of Santa Cruz sponsors Garage Sale Weekend to promote reuse, repair, and resale opportunities in our community. The City of Santa Cruz will publicize the event, encouraging residents to either hold a sale at their home or go garage sale shopping. The spring 2015 Santa Cruz Garage Sale Weekend is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, May 30th and 31st.  Visit a garage sale near you and check out the Garage Sale Treasure Map at www.cityofsantacruz.com/garage sales.

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NerdWallet Came to Santa Cruz!

Offbeat Santa Cruz Inspires Singular Small Businesses

Santa Cruz, small-business haven

Santa Cruz made history as the place where in 1885 surfing was introduced to the U.S. mainland. Nowadays, it’s also known as the California coastal city where small businesses make big waves.

Take a company called the Surf Office. That’s a communal-workspace company with an unusual perk. If you need a break from office work, you can — what else? — go surfing. Surfboards are provided. The beach is right outside the front door.

Then there’s Best Baby Rentals, which lets you rent a stroller, a crib or baby toys if you’re visiting Santa Cruz with your family. And if you’re into beer, hop on Brew Cruz, a converted school bus that offers tours of the area’s craft breweries.
“Santa Cruz is a very creative city,” Surf Office co-founder Emmanuel Guisset tells NerdWallet. “It has always been full of artists, hippies and surfers, but now more and more startups are popping up, and this creates a creative and innovative environment with different values than Silicon Valley or San Francisco.”

Jeremy Neuner, chief executive and co-founder of NextSpace, cites residents’ work ethic as well as their love of fun. NextSpace is another successful collaborative-workspace company and has already expanded to cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“People want to live here,” he tells NerdWallet, “because they want to work hard and play hard.”

There’s a considerable reserve of creativity and talent in Santa Cruz, says Brent Haddad, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

You need “a whole bunch of things in place” for that environment to  flourish, he tells NerdWallet. Among them, the city “has to have smart, creative people. And Santa Cruz has that in spades.”

Some of the city’s entrepreneurs are people who just came to visit but “ended up falling in love with Santa Cruz and not wanting to go home,” says Rebecca Unitt, economic development coordinator with the city.

That’s what happened to Zach Davis. “Santa Cruz was a place we fell in love with as residents,” he tells NerdWallet.

A few years ago, he and veteran pastry chef Kendra Baker started the Penny Ice Creamery, which makes ice cream from scratch. They eventually expanded the venture into other restaurants now collectively known as The Glass Jar. Their company stresses sustainable food and community, and it became such a shining example of a successful small business following the financial crisis that Baker and Davis were invited to be guests at President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address.

Willing to take a risk

Davis cites the Santa Cruz environment as one of the keys to their success. “There’s a tremendous amount of … people who are willing to take a bit of a risk,” he says.

Bud Colligan, CEO of the investment firm South Swell Ventures and the former chief executive of Macromedia, pointed to “a broad range of very educated and qualified people” whom small companies can easily tap and a “supportive political environment.”

In some ways, Santa Cruz, a city of 63,400 tucked away in a corner of the Central California coast known for its colorful surfer scene and hippie communities, is an unlikely haven for innovative small-business pioneers.

But that diversity and location drew bold-thinking entrepreneurs, says Peggy Dolgenos, co-founder of the local Internet service company Cruzio.

“Santa Cruz has attracted a motley group because it’s off the beaten track and such a beautiful place,” she tells NerdWallet.

“We have a top-notch university, UC Santa Cruz, so we have the movie theaters, coffee houses and bookshops that intellectuals love. At the same time, we’re surrounded by jagged mountains, towering redwoods and some of the best surf breaks in the world. Who would choose to live in a place like that? Turns out, a lot of creative people do.”

Teresa Thomae, director of the Cabrillo College Small Business Development Center, tells NerdWallet, “Santa Cruz has always been a pretty entrepreneurial community.”

A small-business owner, even someone just starting out, can expect support from local government and organizations and the community itself, says Krista Bordner, who quit her Silicon Valley job to start Best Baby Rentals.

“It’s overwhelming how supportive people have been,” she tells NerdWallet. “It just felt so good to feel supported by our local community and local businesses, to know that they want me to succeed as a small business.”

Christina Glynn, communications director for the Santa Cruz County Conference & Visitors Council, echoed this sentiment, calling Santa Cruz “a perfect environment” for business leaders and innovators. “We are so open to new ideas and thinking outside the box,” she tells NerdWallet.

That openness is shared by city and business leaders. Davis of The Glass Jar praises Santa Cruz for offering “some really valuable resources for business.” You can see what he’s talking about on the Santa Cruz city government website, under “Business Support.”

Great tool for startups in Santa Cruz

A central feature of the website is Open Counter, the online system the city developed with Code for America, a nonprofit focused on transparency in government. It was set up a few years ago to help entrepreneurs hoping to set up shop in Santa Cruz.

It’s a critical tool for anyone thinking of opening a small business in the city. With Open Counter, you can go through the step-by-step process of setting up your small business in Santa Cruz. Included are a checklist of permits and licenses you’ll need to apply for and a schedule of the fees you will need to pay.

“Our role is to be the advocate for businesses in the community. We focus on providing resources at the early stages, when the business is just starting out,” says Unitt of the Santa Cruz Economic Development department.

In fact, it’s not just for businesses starting out. Davis of The Glass Jar said his company used it when opening his latest restaurant.  “It definitely got things moving a lot quicker, which was pretty cool,” he says.

You can expect help beyond cool online tools, says Bill Tysseling, executive director of the Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce.

“We have lots of experienced people here to help,” he tells NerdWallet.

One of them is Dolgenos of Cruzio, which started in 1989, even before the World Wide Web went live.  It’s no surprise that small companies such as Cruzio have managed not only to survive, but also to thrive despite facing stiff competition from giants including Comcast and AT&T, she says.

“Santa Cruz welcomes new and different ideas, so small businesses here have an advantage,” says Dolgenos, who is also the chair of the Santa Cruz County Business Council.

“People here think that something unique is a good thing. For a company like Cruzio, an independent Internet provider, that allows us to survive,” he says. “We compete with Comcast and AT&T, who have zillion-dollar ad budgets, and yet we have thrived. Our community is willing to support a local alternative to a national corporation.”

Of course, as with any city or region, expect to encounter challenges as a small-business owner in Santa Cruz. “I often sit down with people who are trying to figure out whether they want to jump in,” Tysseling says. “Starting a business anywhere is a daunting process.”

Housing costs a challenge

One challenge he cites is the high cost of housing. The median home price in Santa Cruz is $666,300, according to city data. A low-end one-bedroom apartment in Santa Cruz rents for roughly $1,300 to $1,500, Tysseling says. City and business leaders are looking to build higher-density units, he says, but housing costs are definitely a challenge for companies looking to locate here.

For one thing, it makes recruiting young workers more challenging. “We have a strong base of workers,” he says. “But in general, it is difficult to bring in skilled workers because of the cost of housing.”

Unitt, of the Santa Cruz Economic Development department, also cautions that despite “amazing” ideas for services and products, there can be bumps in the road. “Even having an MBA doesn’t always prepare them for how to get their small business established and growing.”

Your business plan may be flawless, but your small business will encounter opportunities and adjust to the market,” Unitt says. “Small businesses are at their most precarious when fast growth pounces and vision, values, and strategy struggle to remain balanced.”

This is where city and business leaders can help, she says. “We can connect you with free, confidential, expert business consulting through the Central Coast Small Business Development Center to ensure your fast-growing business has the long game in mind as well.”

The good news is, according to those we talked with, meeting these challenges is more engaging and fun in a place like Santa Cruz.

If you’re thinking of starting a small business in the city, here are some good places to start:

  • City of Santa Cruz Economic Development
  • Cabrillo College Small Business Development Center (also known as the Central Coast Small Business Development Center)
  • Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce
  • Santa Cruz County Conference & Visitors Council
  • Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz

For more information about how to start and run a business, visit NerdWallet’s Small Business Guide. For free, personalized answers to questions about starting and financing your business, visit the Small Business section of NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor page.

Benjamin Pimentel is a staff writer covering small business for NerdWallet. Follow him on Twitter @benpimentel, on Google+ and on LinkedIn.

Re-Cap: Cruzio’s First Friday, April Ink.

April Ink, a showcase of local tattoo art in the Santa Cruz County was held by Cruzio in our building last Friday night. Many people came to see the gallery displayed on the walls of CruzioWorks while enjoying food, beverages and live music!

A special thanks to our valued partners for helping make this event as awesome as it could be:

Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Allterra Solar and Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery.

And a special thanks to the band, Full Moon Rooster, the stand up base player in the band is one of Cruzio’s own, Ariel Carter. Great job, the music was absolutely fantastic!

In case you missed the event, here’s a slideshow!

You can also read more about the event on Santa Cruz Wave’s website at:

http://www.santacruzwaves.com/galleries/first-friday-april-ink-at-cruzio/#!prettyPhoto

 

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Cruzio Internet Presents April Ink!

Tattoo-April-Ink-First-Friday-Web

Cruzio Internet’s First Friday Event

April Ink

6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

877 Cedar St, Suite 150

Santa Cruz

Come by our location on Cedar street for this upcoming First Friday event! We are showcasing tattoo art from a variety of local shops in the area! Featuring incredible talent from O’Reilly’s Tattoo, Goodluck Tattoo, Mission Street Tattoo and Henna tattoos from Sacred Mud Henna Blessings.

Our partners, Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery, will be there serving beer, Santa Cruz Shakespeare and Allterra Solar will be there serving wine and other beverages and we will be featuring live music by Full Moon Rooster!

Event will be held at the Cruzio building, 877 Cedar Street. 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Come by for our April First Friday and celebrate some amazing art in our community!

You can also find our event on the First Friday webpage.

http://firstfridaysantacruz.com/cruzio-internet-presents-april-ink/

Cruzio Internet Supplies Riverwalk Apartments with 100Mbps Broadband Connection.

Santa Cruz, CA, March 24, 2015 —  

The grand opening of the new Riverwalk Apartments took place on March 24th, at 110 Lindberg Street and residents were buzzing about their fantastic broadband connection. Cruzio Internet has partnered with For the Future Housing and the Santa Cruz Economic Development Department to supply the new apartment complex with 100Mbps of high-speed, fiber-grade, broadband for all its residents. That strategic partnership made this incredible opportunity possible by arranging to implement a network distribution-friendly infrastructure while the building was under construction. Future tenants will now have access to high-quality Internet for very low prices — free for the first two years.

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Our Kind of Happy Hour

Last night Cruzio employees and coworking members had fun winding down from a busy day in the workplace, it was also a great excuse to have a little be-lated St. Patricks Day celebration!

Here’s a few pictures of our Cruzio comrades, all in a good day’s work!

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MBEP Presents: Getting to A Gigabit Everywhere

Gig3

Panelists: Steve Blum, Brad Smith, Zach Friend, Tony Cricelli and Peggy Dolgenos.

  On January 29th, the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership proudly presented, Economic Summit Invent Your Future Here at the Embassy Suites in Seaside, CA. The event was a day full of productive and beneficial collaboration from individual members of communities that span through Santa Cruz all the way through Monterey, all of whom, had insightful ideas about how we can all move towards a future that will expand our technological, environmental and economical sphere.

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Cruzioworks Showcase 2015

 Cruzioworks hosts first ever works members networking showcase. 

  Bounce Hour, an hour long meeting offered to Cruzioworks members each week as a way to encourage networking and mingling amongst each other, was especially interesting this last Thursday. Calling this unique conference The Showcase, we got to hear five presentations from innovative companies who have been thriving as a part of the Cruzioworks coworking facility. Bounce hour is typically a place for casual rendezvous each week, allowing connections to be built among members who utilize Cruzio’s world class infrastructure as a comfortable space to work. In this case however, the occasion gave Works members the opportunity to talk to a larger audience about their company, advertise their endeavors, and gain valuable exposure among the local community.

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Cabrillo College Providing Free Tuition to Local High School Students

Great news from Cabrillo College! Some really valuable opportunities for local high school students. Here’s the press release from John Graulty, the Dean of Visual, Applied, & Performing Arts at Cabrillo:

Cabrillo College is thrilled to be offering a major new initiative for high school students interested in concurrently enrolling in Cabrillo College courses. The Cabrillo College Division of Visual, Applied, and Performing Arts, in particular, has greatly expanded its visual and performing arts offerings at the College’s Watsonville Center this coming spring term, 2015, and has scheduled these courses at times that are especially “high school student friendly”!

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