The French Quarter is America’s original launch pad.
StartPort is a concept we’re pitching: a glass-front founder hub on Royal or Chartres Street, built for the people already walking past it. It would be the home of Startup Grind New Orleans, and the place where Grind to Market gets practiced every day.
Source: New Orleans & Company. Daily figure is annual visitors divided by 365.
Nearly every one of those trips runs through the same few blocks. A real share of those visitors are founders, engineers, investors and convention-goers. Today nothing on those blocks tells them New Orleans builds companies. StartPort is designed to change that.
A workspace
For high-growth founders: desks, coffee, programming and introductions from people who have built companies.
A front door
For visitors: a host explains what StartPort is and which programs fit, then they walk the exhibits and grab a coffee.
A global home
The home of Startup Grind New Orleans, with live sessions that connect the room to Startup Grind chapters around the world.
Why people will walk in
Morning DJ sets
One morning a week, a local DJ opens the room, the coffee is on, and founders and visitors meet before work. It gives people a reason to be in the Quarter early, when the streets are quiet.
Coffee from the Quarter
StartPort features neighborhood cafés instead of competing with them. Each week a different local roaster is the house coffee, credited on the wall and on our channels.
A museum of firsts
Museum-style exhibits on what New Orleans invented or did first, told with stories, photographs and commissioned work from local artists.
A starting list of New Orleans firsts
- 1796Grétry’s Sylvain at the Théâtre St. Pierre, often called the first true opera staged in America
- 1823America’s first licensed pharmacist opens his shop on Chartres Street
- 1835The St. Charles line, the world’s oldest continuously operating streetcar line
- 1896Vitascope Hall, America’s first dedicated movie theater
- JazzBorn here, and still the city’s greatest export
- 1940sThe Higgins boats Eisenhower credited with winning the war
- 1954ODECO’s Mr. Charlie, the first mobile submersible offshore drilling rig
- 1960sThe first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket, built at Michoud
- 2021Lucid, the New Orleans market-research company, sells for about $1.1 billion
New Orleans was an innovation capital. It still is.
One storefront. A global founder network.
Startup Grind New Orleans is StartPort’s anchor partner, and it turns one room in the Quarter into a doorway to Startup Grind chapters around the world. First connections include Chicago, Venezuela, Israel, Pune, Bangkok and South Korea. Pune and Bangkok have already asked to collaborate.
Our mornings are their evenings
When it’s 7 a.m. at StartPort, it’s:
Central Standard Time, November to March. Some times shift by an hour the rest of the year.
Twin-city fireside chats
A New Orleans founder and a founder from a partner chapter on one live stage, with both rooms watching.
Global pitch mornings
Founders from several chapters pitch investors in the StartPort room and online.
Chapter exchanges
Visiting chapter leaders and founders are hosted at StartPort, and New Orleans founders traveling abroad get introductions through ours.
Louisiana just became a space and tech story.
Starbase Louisiana
In August 2026, SpaceX announced a $100 billion Starship spaceport in Vermilion Parish, about 115 miles west of New Orleans, with first launch targeted as soon as 2029. Louisiana Economic Development expects 3,000 direct jobs over the next decade. The founders, suppliers and engineers who come to look at Louisiana will walk the Quarter first.
The U.S. Space Academy bid
Louisiana’s congressional delegation is backing a bid to locate the proposed U.S. Space Academy in Southeast Louisiana, between Michoud and Starbase. StartPort would be a daily, public proof point of the startup community around that bid.
- StarbaseVermilion Parish
- StartPortFrench Quarter
- MichoudNew Orleans East
- StennisMississippi
The Gulf Coast space corridor, west to east. StartPort would be its front door, in the place visitors actually go. Schematic, not to scale.
The name and the mark. The name nods to the Port of New Orleans, the city’s front door to the world for three centuries. StartPort is the front door for ideas and the people building them. The cathedral spire in the mark doubles as a rocket.
Help us build StartPort.
StartPort is a concept we’re pitching to sponsors, partners and the community. The full concept document, including the sponsorship model, is available on request.
Help us build the board
We’re forming an advisory board of seven to nine people, one per seat, and we’re asking for names.
- Economic developmentThe region’s growth and space strategy
- Port and maritimeThree centuries as the world’s front door
- Space and aerospaceMichoud, Stennis, Starbase
- FoundersPeople who have built and sold companies here
- InvestorsCapital already backing Louisiana startups
- UniversitiesTalent, research and student founders
- CorporateExecutives at likely sponsors
- French QuarterA business or property owner who knows the blocks
- Legal and financeStartup law and accounting
Point us to a storefront
Royal, Chartres or near Jackson Square, and landlords who would value this tenant.
Share a spaceTeam
Chapter Director of Startup Grind New Orleans. Building Louisiana tech companies since 1997, and the 2016 Louisianian of the Year for disaster response.
New Orleans native and PhD biochemist. Chief Science Officer at Mariposa Technology, and a Loyola adjunct teaching AI and Business.
Runs sponsor relationships, operations and the event calendar.
Leads sponsor outreach and sales.