When George Mason University’s Fuse on Mason Square first took shape across the street from George “Ren” McEachern’s Arlington County home in 2023, it did what everyone was curious about. He looked at it.
Fuse, which opens to the public in late 2024, is George Mason’s center for researchers, digital innovators and entrepreneurs, including startups.
“I’m like, wait a minute. I’m in Virginia first,” says McEachern, CEO and co-founder of Falls Church-based Glacier21. “Should I just call them?”
This call combined McEachern and George Mason’s entrepreneurial resources, opening the door to a world of special support and the cooperation of Glacier21, which has created a platform to investigate and combat illegal cryptocurrency.
In 2025, Glacier21 was accepted into George Mason’s Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Accelerator (CCI + A), the first five-month bootcamp aimed at quickly advancing new technologies by connecting companies with mentors, investors and funds. Glacier21 received a grant of $75,000 from CCI+A and won another $5,000 at the last CCI+A competition in October 2025.
In November 2025, Glacier21 participated in George Mason’s annual Accelerate Investor Conference, which also culminates in a pitch competition. Although the company, which was also accepted in the meeting in 2024, was not the last one, Glacier21 is now preparing its next steps, including refining its product, going to market and raising funds. It seems geographic luck and curiosity paid off.
“I don’t think we’d be where we would be without the state of Virginia,” says McEachern, a former FBI special agent with experience in state corruption. “I did not know that these programs exist.
McEachern is just one entrepreneur who has benefited from the resources offered by Virginia universities and colleges. Across the country, schools are doubling their role as drivers of the regional economy, increasing local grants to help increase growth in sectors from technology, bio and government contracts to increase support for entrepreneurs looking to start service-based or commercial companies.
Although the models are different, the offers come from the basics, such as help writing business plans, getting paid, group health insurance and office space to participate in promotion and competition, use of lab space as well as connecting to instructors, students, university researchers and venture capital.
No MBA, no problem
George Mason takes a “no-nonsense” approach to business, says Paula Sorrell, the university’s vice president for innovation and economic development. It operates a variety of business programs, including 25 Small Business Development Centers throughout the state and four business centers in Northern Virginia.
Over the past five years, George Mason has expanded the program in an effort to boost the economy, says Sorrell. This includes a third breakfast session and an annual investment conference, where technology start-ups can meet investors and industry leaders, as well as the addition of CCI + A, which started at the university in 2022 and now operates in four “nodes” in Virginia.
“When an entrepreneur comes to one of our programs, if he is looking for something, we take him from A to point B as quickly as we can, because entrepreneurs don’t have much time,” he says.
To the west, Virginia Tech will open the Entrepreneur Resource Center within the university’s 230-acre Corporate Research Center in the first quarter of 2026, aided by a $648,000 GO Virginia grant. The 6,000-square-foot facility will be a hub for entrepreneurs from the community and the university and will be industry-agnostic, says ERC Director of Operations Kiyah Duffey. The center is affiliated with Tech’s Apex Center for Entrepreneurship and local organizations including the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance and Onward New River Valley. It will include meetings, training and a makerspace as well as access to mentors and other resources.
As of mid-January, 12 founders have submitted interest forms from December, according to Duffey.
He says, “It’s really exciting to see the interest.”
Schools also seek to find talent and strengths in their communities. Military-heavy Hampton Roads has long aimed to retain many of the 12,000 to 15,000 service members who leave each year. While Old Dominion University’s Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship offers accelerators and incubators to help start up and commercialize innovation, it also knows its audience.
Business centers for women and veterans offer supervised bootcamps, and another business development center helps run SAM.gov, the complex federal contracting website, says Paul Olsen, executive director of the organization.
“The [business development center] it has many entrepreneurs coming out of the military ranks. … They don’t want to sit too much in bootcamp and stuff like that. … While their experience is still valid, they want to quickly get involved and get in a position where they can legitimately set up contract opportunities,” Olsen says.
Charleta Harvey started Patriot Woman Coaching after receiving help with business and marketing plans from ODU’s women and veterans’ business development centers. The wife of a US military commander, Harvey opened The Mustard Seed Place in Portsmouth in 2024. She has now expanded to three offices there, and has contracted with the ODU entrepreneurship institute for a program for women involved in the military.
“These two programs helped serve as a catalyst at the time when the opportunity to be at the Mustard Seed Place and have a brick and mortar presence was presented,” says Harvey.
Helping each other
Schools know that developing local business ecosystems can also help improve their future.
The 7,000-square-foot William & Mary Entrepreneurship Hub opened in 2020, occupying vacant retail space on Richmond Road in Williamsburg. The college also partnered with James City County and the cities of Yorktown and Williamsburg, recruiting and working together to launch and distribute business offerings under one roof. Called Launchpad, for $135 a month, the service offers regional businesses the opportunity to work together, parking, scheduling and an internship network, with add-ons, such as private offices, available for an additional fee. Also available is a cohort-based accelerator for regional businesses and alumni that culminates in a venture showcase of up to $6,000 in cash and in-kind awards.
“They can connect with faculty members,” says Graham Henshaw, the college’s associate dean for business. “They get William and Mary’s email address. They become part of the Tribe. It’s a very integrated process.”
A total of 15 regional entrepreneurs entered the accelerator from 2024, and 19 were in the Launchpad program as of mid-January. Henshaw says the Hub seeks entrepreneurs whose companies have a symbiotic match with the college.
As the Charlottesville region looks to grow its cache in the biosciences, the University of Virginia has hired its first chief development officer, Paul Cherukuri, who will start in fall 2025.
Cherukuri leads UVA Innovates, which is affiliated with the U.Va.-affiliated CvilleBioHub. The hub opened its 6,500-square-foot Commonwealth BioAccelerator in the university’s North Fork business park in April 2025, as U.Va. seeks to expand innovation and entrepreneurship beyond its campus.
The BioHub has become a game changer for Revanth Damerla, whose prosthetics company, Stride Robotics, won a one-year residency after placing third in the BioSpark pitch competition for the hub in September 2025. Damerla, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, created his company from that research. He followed his wife to Charlottesville after she got a job at U.Va. last year. Now, Damerla is looking to the future.
“Just talking to BioHub and understanding how they worked and the support they could provide and the facilities though, it just made sense that, hey, my little engineering team could move here once we raised the money,” he says.
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