The Startup Maryland bus tour is now going year-round

The Startup Maryland bus was parked amid the bucolic brick of Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus for Saturday’s Hatch Innovation Conference.
Along with giving the Hopkins entrepreneurs gathered at the event a chance to pitch on the spiffy in-bus video studio, it was the first stop for the 2017 tour of Maryland’s innovation community.
It’s an early start for the tour, now named the STRT1UP Road Show, which is now in its sixth year. Instead of doing the roadshow over a month during the fall, Startup Maryland CEO Mike Binko said the org is spreading out the dates through the year and organizing the calendar in phases.
“This change affords us more time to be onsite with each tour stop host community and to share more of the Startup Maryland mission and initiatives,” Binko said.
The bus will be back in Baltimore at The Connect’s Youth Rise Summit on April 27.
The first leg will also include stops on the Eastern Shore at Salisbury University (April 20-21) and Hoopers Island Oyster Aquaculture Company (April 28). On May 11, the bus is doing double claw duty will be at the Crab Pot pitch competition in Southern Maryland and the Launch Annapolis Crab Derby.
Along with a video that ends up sharable via YouTube, entrepreneurs who pitch on the bus get entered in the Pitch Across Maryland competition, which culminates with a showcase event. The organization also looks to connect entrepreneurs with mentors.