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"By the time a company’s success is widely noticed, the founders and employees have already put in months, maybe years, of groundwork that goes unseen: Raising money, competing at pitch competitions, hiring, building headquarters and more.
With Startups to Watch 2023, the Business Review is highlighting some Albany-area startups that are in the middle of that process and recognizing the momentum they have going forward. Those behind-the-scenes stages in startups are the ones that often go unsung before the perceived “overnight success” that lands on people’s radar.
Meet the people behind the startups preparing for a big year in our area and how they got into position for growth.
KEY CAPTURE ENERGY
Key Capture Energy has about 100 megawatts of energy storage projects in New York state, and that number is about to explode.
“By 2030, only a little over seven years from now, we’ll be effectively 60 times that amount,” said Jeff Bishop, CEO of Key Capture Energy.
That pipeline has been put in place since South Korea-based conglomerate SK Group acquired the Albany-based company almost a year ago with plans to invest $1 billion.
Key Capture Energy develops, constructs, owns and operates large-scale battery systems that store energy created by hydro, wind or other systems. The battery is connected directly to the grid, so it can offload stored energy during times of peak energy use, helping to stabilize the grid.
The company is currently building near Buffalo what it says will be the largest battery in the state — 20 megawatts.
The company grew from two to 20 employees in less than four years.
Key Capture Energy now has about 70 employees, nearly half of them in the state, with roughly 15 job openings. It has other offices in Houston and Salt Lake City, with plans to open another in New York City.
In an effort to solve shipping issues for other small businesses, Shipology founders Keri Wytrwal and Amanda Schermerhorn invested $1,000 to start the business in January 2021.
Since then, Shipology has doubled revenue every six months, and it’s possible they could hit $1 million in revenue next year. They also recently expanded their warehouse space at the Riverview Center in Menands.
Shipology is a third-party fulfillment company that provides small to medium-sized e-commerce businesses with order fulfillment, inventory management, discounted shipping rates, packing consulting, transportation and print shop services.
The goal of the combined offerings is to help clients scale up.
Shipology uses the power of the combined volume of their small-business clients to get better shipping rates on the business’ behalf with large carriers like DHL and FedEx.
It offers clients services for warehousing, packing orders, shipping supplies, special projects and, soon, printing services. Shipping is provided at cost.
Wytrwal and Schermerhorn have experience with large retailers, so clients also get access to the co-founders’ backgrounds in marketing and logistics. They’re able to help clients set up their supply chain and give products UPCs, which are often required at larger warehouses but not Shipology’s.
Rocket Science, founded by a local video game industry veteran, is getting ready for takeoff. The company fulfills development contracts for other video game companies — an area where there’s plenty of work.
The company makes pieces of online multiplayer games. It’s hired at least 15 people since it was founded this past summer and it plans to employ 40-50 people in Glenville. Rocket Science UK, the second arm of the company in Cardiff, Wales, just hired its third person.
Rocket Science plans to hire 100 people between three locations by year five.
It purchased a 9,000-square-foot former firehouse in Glenville for $350,000 and is investing roughly $1.5 million for a full renovation.
The plan is to open the facility by early summer. It will include the Rocket Science studio, space for small video game companies and another space for gaming workforce development in partnership with Tech Valley Game Space.
Rocket Science was founded by Brian Corrigan — whose experience includes roles at Agora Games, MadGlory, Velan Studios and Krafton — and Tom Daniel, former head of business development for Unity Software, a publicly traded video game software development company. Rocket Science is up to four clients, which cannot be named for privacy reasons.
Helios Life Enterprises has raised over a million dollars from both angel investors and crowdfunding, and its technology is catching the attention of others in the industry.
The early technology being developed by the Saratoga-based company can analyze and derive meaning from tonal shifts in speech.
It basically acquires and organizes huge amounts of audio-based data using its proprietary software platform, then sells that data to companies. That area of data sales was valued at $2.7 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $143 billion by 2030.
Helios says its tech can be used to measure the confidence portrayed by CEOs during investor calls. The startup is working with major hedge fund clients as product customers right now.
The product can be customized to focus on specific tonal aspects based on what a customer is interested in targeting. For example, a marketing firm could use one aspect of the data to better understand consumer interest in a movie.
Recently, the company was selected out of thousands of applicants to compete at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200 — a competition of the world’s top early-stage startups for equity-free prize money and the attention of media and investors worldwide. Alumni of the competition include companies such as Dropbox, Fitbit and Mint.
MyLÚA Health is a digital maternal care platform focused on improving prenatal and postpartum health care as well as patient education. And it’s aiming to launch commercially come spring.
The app works by using AI to analyze a mother’s health care information to assess her risk for pregnancy comorbidities, which physicians and other maternal care workers can see through their side of the app.
The app collects info inputted by the user, vitals gathered from a remote patient monitoring device like a blood pressure cuff or a weight scale, and data from electronic medical records.
Product testing is being completed at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, which is owned by Michigan-based Trinity Health. A patient pilot will then be completed there, as well as at Samaritan Hospital in Troy and an undecided third Trinity hospital.
The startup’s digital app has been designed with a particular focus on people from groups that are generally underserved.
There’s a big discrepancy in the quality of maternal health care often experienced by Black women and other women of color. Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The startup is raising a seed round of $2.5 million and has won a couple of startup awards, including one from Cornell Tech for creating “positive societal impact” and $50,000 from the new Shovel Ready fund through Innovate 518.
The federal and state governments are pushing for the adoption of electric vehicles, and that’s translated to some significant business for Livingston Energy Group.
The Schenectady company sells custom EV charging stations for electric cars and other vehicles. Each of the stations are connected to the cloud, allowing the company to monitor use of the units and continually push software updates.
Last year, Livingston crossed into eight figures of revenue, having grown 10 times in the past two years, according to the partners, and they say there’s more to come.
Livingston was expected to triple the number of units sold in 2021 compared to the previous year, as they had in 2020, but it quadrupled that number instead.
The company was up to 15 people in 2020, and it has since expanded to almost 100 employees.
Up next: Selling its methods for EV charging network deployment. Lynkwell is an integration platform built to make connecting charging networks with different charging equipment as easy as possible.
"Ecovative, the Green Island-based company that's developed several products made from mushrooms, has acquired a production site in Europe.
The company, which grows the root-like structure of mushrooms to make packaging materials, foam, vegan leather and more, purchased Lambert Spawn Europa BV, a mushroom spawn production facility in the Netherlands, from a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Lambert Spawn Company.
"The acquisition of Lambert Spawn Europa makes it possible to supply high-quality raw materials and mycelium strains to a global network of customers and licensees, in addition to the company's own brands," the company said in its announcement.
The purchase price of the facility was not disclosed. Ecovative remains headquartered in Green Island.
The facility will continue to serve its existing list of clients in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America. It will also produce proprietary blends of substrate used to grow mycelium materials to support Ecovative's Forager and Mushroom Packaging divisions, as well as its MyForest Foods spinoff, which is ramping up production of a plant-based bacon.
Forager will use the substrate to supply mycelium materials for the fashion and apparel industries, such as leather-like hides and foams, and Mushroom Packaging will use the substrate to produce composite materials used to replace plastic foam packaging.
"This acquisition also positions our company to ensure the highest quality of feedstock for a wide range of new mycelium materials, enabling the best possible products and the capacity to supply our quickly growing global network of customers and licensees as they continue to expand over the coming years," Ecovative CEO and co-founder Eben Bayer said in a prepared statement.
The acquisition comes after a banner year for MyForest foods, which has raised $50 million in venture capital funding to date to position itself for growth. In 2021, Ecovative totaled $100 million in funding.
The Netherlands facility employs 17 people and is capable of producing approximately 20 million pounds of spawn and substrate per year, according to the announcement.
"We are proud of the state-of-the-art facility we built in Venlo, and the team we gathered to operate it," said Scott McIntyre, executive vice president and co-owner of Lambert Spawn, in a statement. "Since collaborating with Ecovative, it has become clear that they are the ideal team with the right expertise of stewarding the facility and caring for its customers, while also creating exciting new opportunities as Lambert continues to focus on serving and growing our North American markets."
"When UAlbany chemistry professor Igor Lednev published his research in 2008 and 2009 about a new way of analyzing crime scene samples, there was only one paper beforehand that showed a specific type of laser method could be used for analysis of bodily fluids, but it was for medical diagnostic purposes.
Lednev's paper has now been referenced more than 600 times, which he said is very rare in the forensic science field. And there are about a dozen labs worldwide now working in that field, he said.
Now, through his startup SupreMEtric, Igor Lednev and doctoral candidate Alexis Weber are working on a system based on the research that can help quickly determine the origin of biological stains.
The technology/product: SupreMEtric is developing a method of identification of bodily fluids in trace biological stains at a crime scene, overcoming the limitations of standard presumptive and confirmatory biochemical tests. Biological stains are present in many violent crime scenes and provide critical data to investigators that directly affect the speed of investigation, costs, quality of prosecution or defense, and court outcomes or conviction rates. The first-generation technology will be integrated with bench-top Raman instruments for applications in crime laboratories, requiring only limited technical knowledge and no sample processing.
How the idea makes the company money: No established agreements or revenue yet — still in the process of research and development. Foresees making money via customer sales to forensic crime labs and possible royalty agreements with future partners.
Size of the market: Primary customers include the more than 600 forensics science laboratories across the U.S., including the U.S. Department of Justice and subcontracted third-party testing labs. Crime scene investigators at the more than 19,000 police departments across the U.S. will represent a second wave of customers. Plans to expand outside of the United States where there are over 1,600 forensic crime labs.
Competition: Traditional techniques currently in use can be classified as presumptive (i.e., they can be either inconclusive or produce false-positive results) or confirmatory. The most utilized presumptive tests for body fluid identification are alternate light sources as well as tests to detect specific components of body fluids, such as the activity of the heme group of blood using the Kastle-Meyer test (phenolphthalein), as well as leucomalachite green (LMG). These tests are body fluid-specific, destructive, and not label free.
Competitive advantage: Technology stands out from the competition because it is universal (applicable to all body fluids); nondestructive; and able to provide results in real-time (or nearly). SupreMEtric’s solution is applicable to aged traces of body fluids and have demonstrated that a bloodstain can be identified as blood after up to two years since its deposition.
Business/technology it could disrupt: Current forensic methods require the use of consumable chemicals and test cards, which can take up a significant budget for forensic labs. Identification of blood and semen are the two most performed tests. SupreMEtric’s method would reduce the cost of consumables over time, saving laboratories and taxpayers money in the long-term.
Executives and their background:
- Alexis Weber, co-founder, chief operating officer - Weber is a doctoral candidate at UAlbany pursuing a doctoral degree in analytical chemistry with a focus on forensic science. Weber's research involves the application of fluorescence, FTIR, and Raman spectroscopy into the investigation of forensically relevant biological samples.
- Igor K. Lednev, co-founder, chief technology officer - Lednev is a distinguished professor of chemistry at UAlbany. His research is specialized in Raman spectroscopy and advanced chemometrics for applications in forensics, medicine, and biochemistry.
Advisers: UAlbany Innovation Center; SUNY Research Foundation, Peter Gonczlik, acting director of innovation and development; Ray Wickenheiser, director, New York State Police Crime Laboratory System.
Investors: None so far, though there's been grant funding from the National Science Foundation.
Capital raised: $281,000 – with $256,000 from the NSF Phase 1 STTR and $25,000 from the SUNY Startup Summer School Demo Day Pitch Competition.
Capital sought: $8 million to get to the second-generation of product.
Ideal exit: Ideally bought out by a larger company, either an instrumentation company that produces Raman spectrometers or a software/database company that sells to forensic crime labs already.
A closer look
Company name: SupreMEtric LLC
Headquarters: 7 University Place, B210, Rensselaer, NY 12144
"A startup that’s developing a next-generation electronics component is "leaning in" to New York as it hunts for a location to build a $150 million fabrication facility that would create at least 160 jobs.
Menlo Micro said in March that it was considering sites in New York — including the Albany region — as well as California, Texas and Florida.
CEO Russ Garcia said this week the company hasn't settled on a site yet, but it is continuing to take a close look at the Empire State.
"We've been leaning into New York really, really heavily in that selection process to move the technology back to the U.S.," he said.
Menlo Micro is developing a smaller, more efficient version of an electronic switch that controls the flow of electricity from a power source to an application. The company says its new switch operates up to 1,000 times faster than the older version, and its system can more reliably monitor, measure and control the distribution of power.
Built using semiconductor manufacturing systems, the switch structure is smaller than a human hair. The small size creates a more robust product and allows for easier manufacturing scalability, the company previously said.
Menlo Micro started selling its products in early 2020 for the radio and telecommunications industry. The product has potential applications that range from electrical vehicles to wall outlets, lighting, home automation and more.
In March, Menlo Micro secured $150 million in Series C funding, and Garcia said one of the main priorities with the money is to move manufacturing operations from Sweden to the United States. The company is looking for 100,000-150,000 square feet of space for the fab.
Garcia said the company would like to return to New York as it already has a core team working in the Schenectady and Albany areas, and Corning, a key supplier and investor in Menlo Micro, is headquartered in the state.
The company was spun off of GE Research in Niskayuna in 2016. It later set up its business development office and headquarters in Southern California but has kept its product development team in the Albany NanoTech Complex.
"We've joined [the American Semiconductor Innovation Coalition] and also have a tight relationship with SUNY Nanotech," Garcia said. "We have our offices there, we use the labs. But at the same time, we've got some strong relationships with the faculty there and doing joint research on on advanced switch and development."
The company is also continuing discussions with the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer's, who co-sponsored the CHIPS Act and has been an advocate for the semiconductor industry upstate.
The next quarter will be a key window for semiconductor companies and municipalities looking to land new facilities. Applications for the CHIPS funding and tax credits open in February. And the federal government is expected to release new details about the planned National Semiconductor Technology Center, which could include 1,000 jobs. Albany is considered a strong candidate for the NSTC.
"I think that New York has done a pretty darn good job of creating an ecosystem now, everywhere from workforce development in the university systems through to a number of large companies," Garcia said. "I guess I would call it creating the new Silicon Valley again, if you will, in upstate New York and really leveraging what IBM and GE and some of the other folks had done years ago."
Helios to pitch at South by Southwest: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...xsw-pitch.html
"Saratoga Springs startup Helios Life Enterprises has been selected as a finalist for the South by Southwest Pitch event in March.
Helios is developing technology it says can analyze and derive meaning from tonal shifts in speech, specifically in the comments made by executives during earnings calls.
The startup was chosen as one of 40 finalists to pitch to a panel of industry experts, media professionals, venture capital investors and angel investors in Austin, Texas, during the famous multimedia festival. The event's advisory board selected the final startups from the 740 applications received this year.
The companies will present their pitch in front of a live audience to a panel of judges, including Stacy Feld of Johnson & Johnson, Jacqueline Jennings of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, Mingu Lee of Cleveland Avenue, Trish Costello of Portfolia, and Kay Koplovitz, the founder of USA Networks, among others, according to the announcement.
One winner will be awarded per category, and the most promising project will receive the Best In Show award.
Helios co-founder and CEO Sean Austin said the competition is a good fit since it has a category specifically for artificial intelligence companies. Between now and March, Austin said his goal is to hone his pitch to appeal to this audience, which goes beyond the financial sector.
"Of course, there's investors in lots of different categories. It's no longer asset managers and hedge funds," Austin said. "We have an investment round open now through our website that was sort of an extension of what we did last year. So, certainly, we want people who believe in this vision to commit and get on board basically and participate. Just the broad scope of the platform is for us a new category we've never really tapped into."
Helios is basically in the business of acquiring and organizing huge amounts of audio-based data using its proprietary software platform, then selling that data to companies. That area of data sales – called alternative data – was valued at $2.7 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $143 billion by 2030.
In the case of the financial services industry, Austin says the tech can be used to measure the confidence portrayed by CEOs during investor calls. The startup is working with major hedge fund clients as product customers right now, he told the Business Review in June.
The Helios software now listens to every earnings call of all 4,400 U.S. public companies, Austin said. It has analyzed millions of hours of audio at this point.
Over the last 15 years, 613 companies have participated in SXSW Pitch, with over 93% receiving funding and acquisitions in excess of almost $21.5 billion. Of those companies, 16% were acquired by Google, British Telecom, Huffington Post, Apple, Live Nation, OpenTable, Meta, Michelin, Constant Contact or Harmon.
SXSW is best known for its music and film festivals, which take place the same week.
Helios was named one of the Albany Business Review's Startups to Watch in 2023."
Albany semiconductor company raises $38M from investors: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...s-funding.html
"Silicon carbide wafer manufacturer Pallidus Inc., which is based in Albany, raised over $38 million at the end of 2022.
The company makes wafers for semiconductors that are used in the transportation, green energy, industrial and telecom markets, according to its website.
The company's December Form D filing indicates that nine investors bought a total of $38,474,993 in equity from Nov. 18 to Dec. 2.
Pallidus was founded in 2015 as an offshoot of a Houston company, Melior Innovations, which describes itself as a "materials technology company" and has a lab operation in Clifton Park.
It moved to the Albany area in 2019, according to Form D filings, and set up headquarters in the Corporate Circle business park. Building permit records show that in March 2021 BBL Construction did a tenant fit-up project for Pallidus at 30 Corporate Circle for a listed cost of over $85,500.
In 2021, the company secured a "multimillion-dollar private equity investment to scale its facility, enabling its ramp from pilot scale to full wafer production," according to its website.
Pallidus now has 40 employees in Albany, according to LinkedIn, although that number couldn't be confirmed. Pallidus didn't respond to requests for comment.
The material Pallidus specializes in — silicon carbide — is a rapidly growing segment of the semiconductor industry, said Kevin Cassidy, managing director and senior research analyst at Rosenblatt Securities in Washington, D.C. He has been a semiconductor analyst for the last 20 years.
The material's ability to conduct high voltages makes it valuable in applications for products like electric vehicles.
Pallidus' presence in Albany is a potential sign that a silicon carbide wafer cluster is growing in the Northeast.
Cassidy said with silicon carbide companies like Wolfspeed in Utica and Onsemi in Fishkill in the Hudson Valley and in New Hampshire — as well as startups like NoMIS Power Group growing out of Albany Nanotech — it makes sense that Pallidus would want to move to the Northeast.
"Technologies tend to group into areas, which is why it's called Silicon Valley and why Detroit has all the car companies, that maybe the Northeast is starting to be developed with silicon carbide," he said.
The demand for silicon carbide wafers is high, and the industry is growing fast. Cassidy said industry forecasts show that for the foreseeable future, companies like Onsemi won't be able to meet demand.
Cassidy said this year Onsemi will ship more than a billion dollars worth of silicon carbide products, and its total revenue will probably hit $8 billion.
"Silicon carbide is starting to replace silicon on a lot of applications in industrial and automotive applications," he said. "You can get more miles on your car if you're using silicon carbide in electronic vehicle than if you use silicon."
UCM Digital Health and MVP Health Care launch new ER telemedicine program: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...-services.html
"Troy-based startup UCM Digital Health has launched a new program for MVP Health Care members designed to keep patients who don't need emergency care out of the hospital.
It's a program that aims to help the overwhelmed hospital system and cut costs. UCM provides a platform through which patients can work with emergency medicine providers to determine whether an issue requires an ER visit or a different type of care. That assistance can help patients avoid taking a potentially unnecessary — and expensive — trip to the emergency room.
Now, it's offered as part of Treatment in Place, a service for people covered by MVP's health plans. UCM already facilitates MVP's digital health care app, Gia.
Treatment in Place is available to MVP members after they call 911 and emergency medical services is dispatched. UCM's emergency medical staff is contacted by EMS for patients with non-life-threatening conditions. Patients can then be treated by the physicians via telemedicine in tandem with the EMTs and paramedics.
"There's our ER team virtually, there's the paramedic in the home, there's the patient in the home. And now we can all work collectively together to say, 'OK, this doesn't need to go to the ER, you just need IV fluids, you're a little dehydrated,'" said Keith Algozzine, UCM's president and CEO.
The program has cost benefits too, said Dr. Kristen Navarette, MVP Health Care’s medical director for clinical collaboration and performance management. The cost of an ambulance ride — before insurance or other discounts — rose 22%, to more than $1,200, from 2017 to 2020, according to nonprofit Fair Health.
"We don't want you using the ER if you don't really need it. If we could have treated you in a different way, not only because it's inconvenient and challenging for the health care system that's really strained right now, but also it is costly, right?" she said. "We want to help you avoid those costs, if we at all can, and ensure that you're really getting care in the right way possible for you that's convenient."
That strained system is part of what Treatment in Place is trying to mitigate. The long wait times at emergency departments nationwide are keeping people with serious conditions from seeing a doctor in a timely manner.
There's also been a persistent shortage of EMTs — nearly one-third of EMTs quit in 2021, according to one study. Having the available squads tied up in non-emergent calls — what Algozzine described as a "taxi service" to the hospital — could also have consequences
"If you look carefully at this, people are going to die. Morbidity and mortality, which is basically the severity of illness that you receive even up to death, is going to be getting worse and worse if we don't start solving these problems and we take the pressure off the acute-care-facility hospitals."
The service is also expanding on MVP's patient preference trends. Navarette said that member use of telemedicine, which exploded during the pandemic, has not leveled off to pre-pandemic levels.
UCM’s Treatment in Place program is currently available to MVP members in the following counties: Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren, Washington, Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, Westchester, Herkimer, Oneida, Allegany, and Monroe.
UCM was founded in 2015 Algozzine and Dr. Michael Bibighaus as a way to alleviate some of the time-consuming triage that happens in emergency rooms.
UCM raised $5.5 million in a series A funding round in 2021. It also added three C-suite positions that year: chief technology officer, chief financial officer and chief revenue officer.
The company has hundreds of clients and operates in all 50 states."
Grants, accelerators, incubators and competitions for Albany region startups: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...petitions.html
"The Capital Region's resources for innovation have been described as siloed and difficult to access. Often, that initial access to programs fostering budding businesses is crucial to a startup's establishment.
From funding to programming, here's a list of the Albany's areas resources useful in getting startups off the ground.
Startup accelerators and incubators in the Capital Region
Accelerators are shortened courses that usually run for a few weeks and help solidify aspects of the business like customer discovery — who the product is for and what kind of market exists for it. They also provide practice on how to pitch investors.
“That gets you in the place to really be able to focus on building your team and moving on to the next level of say, an incubator, but that accelerator program should be able to give you some of that initial funding too,” said Maria Pidgeon, interim director of community and economic development at University at Albany.
After accelerators, incubators are a logical next step, Pidgeon said. They last a few years and offer resources to companies that help them grow.
“[Startups are] able to utilize not only the entrepreneur-in-residence services, events, workshops, networking, and they could stay there up to three years. But during that three-year phase, they’re meeting milestones and they’re growing and they’re getting to a point where they’re hiring and utilizing all the other resources and services like mail and marketing.”
IgniteU — Downtown Troy
NYBizLab — Schenectady, affiliated with Transfinder
Tech Valley Center of Gravity — Manufacturing incubator, downtown Troy
Biomedical Acceleration and Commercialization Center — Albany Medical Center
STEAM Garden — Entrepreneurial incubator/accelerator from the Central Avenue BID
UAlbany Innovation Center— Incubator program for tech companies, including climate and environmental science, biomedical science and biotechnology, forensic sciences and cybersecurity, and advanced data analytics
ACES Incubator — Community Loan Fund incubator for women- and minority-owned small businesses and nonprofits
Investment funds for Capital Region startups
Here's a list of area venture capital firm and angel investment groups in upstate New York:
New York Ventures (Empire State Development): Seed and Series A
Eastern New York Angels: Seed from $50,000 to $250,000
Armory Square Ventures: Seed Stage and Series A between $500,000 and $2M
Hudson Valley Startup Fund: Pre-seed and Seed from $200,000
Grants and loans for Capital Region startups
Here’s a list of local, state and federal options for loans and grants:
Capital Region Chamber of Commerce Micro Loan Program — Several micro loan programs that can provide up to $25,000 for startups, and up to $50,000 for existing businesses with a proven track record.
Small Business Development SEED Loan — Program for future entrepreneurs that bases the lending decision on the character of the applicant and feasibility of the business model. Maximum loan is $35,000.
Innovate 518 Shovel Ready Fund —For companies in good standing at an Innovate 518 affiliated partner. Last round awarded $50,000 to three winners. Affiliated partners include the Center for Economic Growth, NYSTEC, SUNY Adirondack, Biomedical Acceleration and Commercialization Center, University at Albany Innovation Center, NYBizLab, SPARK Saratoga, NY - BEST, IgniteU, Tech Valley Center of Gravity and STEAM Garden.
SBIR/STTR awards — Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs are competitive federal programs that encourage small businesses to engage in federal research and development with the potential for commercialization. Phase I awards are generally $50,000–$250,000 for 6 months (SBIR) or 1 year (STTR).
Empire State Development Pre-Seed and Seed Fund Matching Program — For companies across technology markets. Program will offer early-stage businesses growth assistance from $50,000 up to $250,000 with matching from the private sector.
FuzeHub Manufacturing Grants — For New York state nonprofit organizations that partner with at least one New York state small- to medium-sized manufacturer at any stage of maturity.
Competitions for Albany region startups
New York Business Plan Competition: Intercollegiate competition for students.
FuzeHub Commercialization Competition: Companies throughout New York state compete to demonstrate the commercialization potential of their technology or product, with an opportunity to win up to $50,000. For small/medium manufacturing companies.
U.S. Small Business Administration Growth Accelerator Fund Competition: Aims to increase the pipeline and success of STEM/R&D-focused, prospective Small Business Innovation Research companies, innovators, and entrepreneurs via the facilitation of partnerships and relationships between stakeholder groups.
I-CORPS in the Capital Region
The I-Corps program is designed to support the commercialization of high-tech discoveries in fundamental science and engineering.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute runs teams from all over the region. The program allows for customer discovery and testing the hypothesis of an idea that could be a business model later.
Rensselaer will offer four I-Corps cohorts of six to 10 teams each this academic year. Teams will receive $1,000 in seed funding to explore the commercial potential of a research project, which could range from medical devices to new materials, software, hardware, physical products and more. After completing the program, participants may be eligible to apply for the second-stage I-Corps program that includes a $50,000 grant."
Albany region startup founders face a challenge where the rules of the game aren’t always clear. Here’s a tip sheet to help: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...ssistance.html
"Starting a company with just an idea is a gamble.
It’s a nonlinear process that’s daunting yet sometimes rewarding for those willing to go through the twists and turns.
The problem in the Capital Region for potential innovators is where to begin.
Founders and program coordinators alike have said that resources such as grants, venture capital and business development assistance are disjointed and disconnected. Sometimes, it’s unclear what’s actually available and who it’s actually for.
Noa Conger Simons, president and CEO of the Upstate Capital Association of New York, says the issue lies in the structure of the ecosystem itself. Her New Paltz-based association includes angel investors, venture capital investors, growth-equity investors, private-equity investors, financiers and asset-based lenders.
“Investors say there aren’t enough good deals. You listen to entrepreneurs, there isn’t enough capital. And so somewhere in the middle lies the truth,” she said. “In this marketplace, there are a lot of barriers between making efficient connections.”
Ironing out that roadmap, so the connections are shorter and stronger, can make a big difference. Better ideas surface, founders get help developing stronger business plans, and promising new companies get off the ground.
“As a startup entrepreneur, you are probably going to find a lot of twists and turns in your path,” Simons said. “And so maybe what you start with isn’t where you’re going to end up. That’s often the case, but who you meet along the way will kind of have a dramatic impact on shaping the journey,”
Here’s a look at how a local startup founder is making his way along that path — and some of the people working to make the journey easier by fostering a culture of innovation.
The start of a startup
Adam Ryason graduated from a Ph.D. program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute right as the pandemic was beginning in 2020. He knew he wanted to start a company and settled on an idea that seemed to have perfect timing.
While collaborating with researchers at Harvard Medical School, Ryason realized he could adapt digital technology for simulating physical spaces in a way that could model how infectious diseases spread through a place like a hospital.
“‘We’re on the forefront right now. These are some of the issues that we’re encountering in the operating room,’” he recalls his collaborators telling him at the time. “’If we can come up with a simulation that would help with figuring some of these aspects out, there definitely will be a market for that in the immediate future, as well as further down the line.’”
Ryason has been able turn that idea into a startup called Intelligent Medicine, but the obstacles he’s encountered along the way highlight how hard it can be for founders here to grow an innovation into an actual company.
Ryason won about $15,000 competing at student pitch competitions, including the New York Business Plan Competition. He used that money to pay consultants to develop a proof-of-concept product.
Another boost came in the form of a National Science Foundation program that prompted him to sharpen the idea into a product.
And he even started to get some traction with potential customers at local hospitals.
“Pretty much we were able to get people that would say that they were willing to pay money to use this. We got support from different hospitals and different clinicians within the hospitals, saying that this technology would help them with their job.”
Now he needed money to turn the idea into a company. Ryason said he felt like he had to look at higher-level, more competitive grants just to secure early funding.
A missing connection
Maria Pidgeon, interim director of community and economic development at UAlbany, said what’s missing in the region is that link for connecting startups to early-stage funding.
“I think the next step is getting a really good accelerator program here in the Capital Region and being able to have that program provide some initial kind of seed funding for companies to help them off initially, either building a prototype or building out their team,” she said.
UAlbany is home to Innovate518, the Capital Region’s state-funded innovation hotspot. Its goal is to act as a connector between the area’s startup resources.
Innovate 518 can be a good first stop for any startup, Pidgeon said. But it’s no substitute for an accelerator, which is a short, intensive program that mentors cohorts of startup founders as they quickly iterate on an idea and, the hope is, eventually land seed investment.
That sort of experience can help startup founders prepare themselves to make a strong pitch to funders, said Simons of the Upstate Capital Association.
“Part of the problem is that a lot of people who have a million ideas are trying to get to the investors, but they aren’t actually investor-ready,” she said. “They’re not prepared and so they’re not getting an audience. So then they say there’s not enough money. They get an audience and they get turned down because, again, they’re not ready.”
Joe Richardson has seen that firsthand.
Richardson is managing partner of Eastern New York Angels, which looks to invest in promising early companies using pooled capital from angel investors. ENYA has $600,000 that it’s been wanting to deploy for two years.
“We’ve looked at a number of companies, but they weren’t ready,” Richardson said.
The missing piece for a lot of startups seeking funding has been a solid business plan, he said. Having that plan shows a level of preparedness. It outlines how entrepreneurs are going to sell their product and how to stand out in the market.
“Investing is really taking place more where there is a more formal product or service, that customer discovery has been done. And in many instances now, where there has been an indication of generating first-stage revenue,” Richardson said.
Another thing funders are looking for: trust.
Simons said it’s never too early for founders to start forming relationships with potential investors.
“Startups should start coming to events when they want to build their networks. Relationships with anybody are based on trust, and the way you build trust is through longevity and through doing what you say you’re going to do.”
Simons encourages startup founders to send out monthly updates on the progress of the idea to build trust and show that goals are being accomplished.
Maintaining the momentum
Short on funding — but long on validation that he had a good idea — Adam Ryason got to work.
He applied for a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation — twice — and landed $256,000 in March 2022.
Intelligent Medicine grew to three full-time employees, including Ryason, and continued to interview potential clients across the country.
Then Ryason made the decision to join UAlbany’s incubator in order to have access to SUNY resources and researchers as well as having a sounding board for ideas.
That led to Intelligent Medicine receiving $50,000 from Innovate 518’s Shovel Ready Tech Fund. The pre-seed grant, which aims to help local startups make their companies attractive to private investors, is for companies in good standing at one of Innovate 518’s partners.
Intelligent Medicine is using the money to develop the front-end interface that customers will use to interact with its simulation product.
Next up: Raising money for a seed round. Ryason said he’s been preparing to pitch to private investors.
And the company is on the lookout for potential partners to help it reach the next level.
“If we’re able to utilize the resources of, like, Regeneron or CDPHP to help show that, all right, this technology is valid, this technology works and it provides benefit to a major stakeholder — that is usually enough to get a company off the ground."
Q&A: Should you patent your idea?
Some startups might develop a concept that requires a patent. John Pietrangelo, a patent agent at Tech Valley Patent, said his No. 1 piece of advice is to file a patent as soon as possible.
Who needs to file a patent? There is a broad scope of types of innovations or companies or entrepreneurs that should consider patent protection. At least talk to someone to make sure whether the invention is subject matter that can be patented. For example, somebody comes up with a new business idea about how to arrange a layout on a screen of a computer for their app. Is that something to be protected with a patent? OK, maybe, maybe not. Compare that to somebody comes up with a medical device, here’s something you definitely want to consider protecting because the market is a potentially big market and it’s very competitive and you want to file something as soon as possible to get your earliest filing date. Remember, you want to file something earlier, because anything that becomes published after you file can’t be used against you.
When should they file? Ideally you want to reach out to a patent agent or a patent attorney before you’re disclosing it to someone. Before you’re talking with investors, before you bring it to the machine shop to make parts for it, before you draft and before you have your technical article published in a professional journal, because that’s when it becomes public.
What should they file? A provisional application is an application you file to get an earlier filing date. A provisional application does not mature into a patent. When you file a provisional, you’re given one year from that filing date to file the regular nonprovisional application. That nonprovisional application matures into a patent.
I work with many clients that say they’re developing an invention. Well, they’ve only gotten so far, so they file a number of provisionals within that one-year period as the invention develops. So within that one-year period you get improvements, which is typical as six months down the road the idea changes. You can file another provisional application within that one-year period and then combine them into the nonprovisional within a year."
From the article: "Troy-based startup Inspect Point is growing its products and its team.
Inspect Point’s software allows fire protection companies to manage building inspections, proposals, invoices and service tickets through a cloud-based application.
The company raised $28 million in early 2022 from venture capital firm Mainsail Partners in the form of growth equity, private capital typically for relatively mature companies that are looking to grow.
Jennifer Doyle, co-founder and vice president of customer success, said that money has been reinvested into Inspect Point to develop its product and to hire more employees.
The company has grown to a total head count of 32 across 12 states — 11 of those employees are salespeople.
A key change over the last year has been adding employees in more specialized areas like payment collection. Doyle said it helps her to work on more big picture company objectives.
"That helped us to get out of the weeds to see it from higher up. My team doubled. I have a leadership level now underneath me, and they oversee people, that's just been helpful. It allows them to become hyper focused," she said.
More hands on deck means the ability to integrate more services into Inspect Point. For example, Doyle said the company is working on making its software compatible with QuickBooks as well as the systems local municipalities use to track compliance.
"A lot of municipalities, they require that the reports are uploaded into that so that way they can look to see in that area, what are the buildings that have issues?" Doyle said. "So the problem with that, from our customers' perspective, is that takes a lot of time for them to manually upload the report. ... It's a lot of data entry, and so our integration will allow them to do what they do inside of Inspect Point and with the push of a button, push that stuff over into compliance."
The company is also building out services based on client feedback, including the ability to accept payments through the Inspect Point software, a new feature that launched this year. Doyle said collecting invoices has been a pain point for inspections and service calls as they've been handled separately from the actual services, leading to a delay in payments.
"It's a big initiative in the company. It allows our users to be able to collect electronic payments, which is helpful because they're on site and they have sometimes to track down payments. ... Whereas if you have payments integrated into your software, you could perform the inspection and collect payment," Doyle said.
Another new add is the ability to accept proposal down payments for larger installation contracts to help clients kickstart cash flow.
"Our customers are quoting not just for new inspection work but installation work. And installation contracts are big, they're expensive, there's a lot of materials involved. So, the proposal down payment function allows them to say, 'Here's how much it's going to cost, and I'm requiring you to put down 50%.' So it's helping them with cash flow," Doyle said.
Adding more features works toward the goal of eliminating the need for customers to have multiple different software.
"They don't have to have an inspection software, a service software, an invoicing platform, a quoting system — they can do all of that inside of Inspect Point," Doyle said."
Startup hopes its tree-free hemp lumber helps save forests, Structural Biocomposites was awarded a $50,000 grant to further develop the sustainable building material: https://www.timesunion.com/business/...ness-spotlight
From the article: "While billions of trees are cut down annually to clear space for agriculture and obtain wood for manufacturing and construction, a Rotterdam-based startup believes the future of industrial lumber doesn’t require razing forested land.
In fact, it doesn’t require trees at all.
Founded by engineer T.J. Fiala, Structural Biocomposites is on a mission to reduce deforestation by producing tree-free industrial lumber made from hemp, a plant in the cannabis family known for its fast-growing properties.
“An acre of hemp has four times as much biomass as an acre of trees. It’s one of the strongest fibers in the plant kingdom,” said Fiala.
His company was chosen as one of 10 recipients statewide to receive a $50,000 grant through the Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund created by FuzeHub, an Albany nonprofit that gets state funding and helps manufacturers in New York bring their products to market.
To fabricate the new building material, Structural BioComposites uses a manufacturing process to encase a hemp core with layers of industrial hemp canvas, creating a material denser than wood that can still be manipulated with standard tools and scaled in both strength and dimension. The sustainable alternative to forested lumber will sequester carbon from the atmosphere and help to remediate soil, according to the founder.
From his prototype two-by-fours to plywood sheets and more, he explained that the material is characterized by its dimensionally consistent, arrow-straight appearance that is devoid of the natural defects associated with forest service products, such as bowing, twisting, crowning, knots and splintering. It’s also fire-resistant, rot-resistant and not prone to be compromised by wood-destroying insects.
The result: less waste, easier installation and shorter production cycle times. In Fiala’s words, it is an “obvious solution.”
“For contractors, it’s all uniform and it’s straight and you don’t have to go to the lumber yard and check down the length of each one of them making sure there aren’t any issues,” he explained. “When you put the prototype into someone’s hand, it’s so fun to watch the change that comes over them and the response of, ‘Oh right, it’s brilliant.’ I just don’t know why it hasn’t been thought of before.”
Fiala applied for the grant in conjunction with Potsdam-based CITEC Business Solutions, a nonprofit business consulting organization. For him, it’s validation that his work over the past five years, from coming up with the idea in his basement to applying for a patent, has paid off.
He will use the funding to determine the material characteristics of the hemp-based lumber and conduct additional testing to see how it will perform in both residential and commercial building structures. Once he establishes its proven value, Fiala hopes to franchise his suite of goods and techniques to establish textile mills and industrial hemp lumber manufacturing hubs throughout the country.
“We are happy to see a focus on sustainability, as well as the desire to solve some very pressing problems. From agriculture to medical issues to industry 4.0, this is such a well-rounded list of projects” said Elena Garuc, executive director at FuzeHub, in a statement. “Since the pandemic, we have seen an increase in partnerships amongst organizations in different regions, and this opens a new set of opportunities for collaboration. That is exactly what these grants were made for.”
From the article: "In 2021, David Borton and his son, Alex, sailed the 1,400-mile journey from Bellingham, Washington, to Glacier Bay, Alaska.
They completed the 20-day journey without setting foot on land via a solar-powered electric boat that they designed — and they did so under notoriously cloudy skies.
Borton, a retired solar energy engineering professor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, left teaching in 2014 to design and sell his patented solar-powered boats like the one from his journey.
And now, he's hoping to bring manufacturing back to New York state. The boats are currently made in Florida and are shipped to Maine to be finished.
Borton's company, Sustainable Energy Systems, has sold four boats to date. One carries passengers around Indian Lake in the Adirondacks, and another does tours for the Hudson River Maritime Museum. That second boat is the first 100% solar U.S. Coast Guard-inspected passenger vessel.
Boats from Sustainable Energy Systems aren't yachts or speedboats; they're more recreational, intended for leisurely cruises with picnics and cocktails on the water. But right now, Borton's just trying to create the market.
"We call it the bleeding edge of technology. It's very difficult because there's no market. There aren't solar boats out there, and electric boats are just coming," Borton said. "And people say, 'Oh, electric boat. I'm afraid I'm going to get out there and run out of power. We don't have that problem. We've never run out of power."
To bring the boat manufacturing operations under one roof, Borton said he would need over 150,000 square feet of warehouse space with an overhead crane as well as separate areas for fiberglass work and painting. Ideally, the facility would be able to build hundreds of boats per year.
As far as workforce, Borton said people can be trained to make boats.
"I could teach you how to build boats. How long have people been building boats? ... It's not rocket science. It's ancient technology," he said.
The cost of the boats is higher than a typical vessel. The Wayward Sun, the 27-foot wooden passenger vessel that sailed from Washington to Alaska, is listed at $179,000, and the fiberglass 24-foot Solar Sal at $135,000. But they don't require fuel to run, don't need charging and have limited maintenance costs. Three fiberglass boats will be available this spring, and fiberglass lowers the cost.
"If you're a long-term lifecycle type person, then it's a no brainer. .... In other boats, here's this engine that requires fuel. It requires oil changes. It requires water to cool. It requires all this maintenance. This has no maintenance. No, I shouldn't say 'no.' You've got to keep it clean," he said.
Without a gas-powered motor, they're also very quiet. During Borton's journey to Alaska, he said dolphins and whales were frequent visitors because of the lack of noise.
The solar panels allow the boat to cruise indefinitely during daylight hours, and it stores enough energy for anywhere between 20 and 100 miles at night depending on cruising speed.
Overall, Borton and his company are looking to create a more sustainable boat.
"A lot of people spend a lot of money on gas, and they just blow carbon dioxide and smoke. And carbon monoxide kills people in boats every year," he said. "The point is that climate change is bad. ... And we need to change things if we're going to have a better life."
PopPD is a startup with a software platform where educators can post video lessons to help other teachers with professional development in the classroom. Co-founder Alissa McDonald is a former South Glens Falls teacher. She's now based in Saratoga Springs.
The company is in the middle of raising a $500,000 pre-seed round. Beta Boom, an investment fund focused on funding software companies founded by women and underrepresented populations, nearly closed that with its investment of $300,000.
PopPD works as a marketplace where content creators receive 70% of a sale and PopPD receives 30%. The lessons are typically broad concepts on teaching strategies, rather than single-day lesson plans. An hourlong lesson is typically $40-$50.
Since August 2022, PopPD has grown users from 250 to about 600.
With the pre-seed funding, McDonald said PopPD is working on the second iteration of its platform.
"With the investment, what we're aiming to do is almost ready to launch is a learning experience platform where there's more of a goal-based learning experience setup versus just your regular online courses, modules and lesson plans," she said. "This is more of: Choose your goal and then work through some demo videos and some modeling from other teachers so that it's really easy to implement the strategies that you're learning — much more like Instagram style, more social media than what we had originally put out."
Beta Boom also has experience working with software startups, an added benefit for PopPD.
"They really like our domain expertise. We know teachers, we are teachers. And so even though we don't have experience building a startup, I think that they saw that we really know our customer, and that their strength is really in building products. So it's a perfect match up. We work together every week," McDonald said.
The majority of teachers in the U.S. already use websites like Teachers Pay Teachers to purchase lesson plans and activities for the classroom, but that doesn’t help as much with professional development, McDonald said. It can be overwhelming to keep track of good pieces of information in places like YouTube and TikTok, and actually integrate that info into teaching methods, she said, which is why she believes the platform can be valuable for users.
The new version of PopPD will also have more focus on creators and how they can upload content.
"In our platform, she'll be able to pull in a short demo clip and then annotate off to the side and say, 'Here's my play-by-play. Here's what I'm doing here. Notice how I'm inflecting my voice here.' So it's kind of a side-by-side of a demo and her notes. So we think it's gonna be really powerful," she said.
McDonald's path to starting PopPD began in 2019 when she was on maternity leave. To create a new stream of income she started the “Teacher Hustle Podcast” and a series of online courses and workshops aimed at helping teachers understand the power of branding.
Her online following grew to more than 15,000 educators worldwide, which she said led to thousands of teachers launching their own courses and workshops online. During that time, she saw some good ideas not get as much attention simply because the content creators may not have had enough time to market themselves. She thought creating the PopPD platform could be a good way to populate those ideas in one place.
PopPD's co-founder is Megan Kensington, a former high school teacher based in Boston. They met because Kensington was a student in one of McDonald’s classes."
Also, RPI president urges regional, collaborative approach to innovation: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...-startups.html
From the article: "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's president is committed to making the university a leader in regional collaboration.
At the university's "Invest in the Capital Region" event Wednesday, Martin Schmidt said during a panel discussion about how to build the life sciences ecosystem in the region that he's aiming to collaborate with other institutions in the area and find ways to translate innovation out of universities.
Schmidt said that RPI is in the process of developing a strategic plan over the next six to 18 months, a pillar of which is helping to move innovation beyond the university. Schmidt said uniting the big regional players, like hospitals, colleges and businesses is one step.
"We have to think about how to the institutions in this region that are deeply committed to being here, how are they going to work together collaboratively to create infrastructure?" Schmidt said.
Schmidt, who spent more than 40 years at MIT, pointed to the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an example — a collaboration between MIT, Harvard and Harvard-affiliated hospitals to advance biomedical research.
"I think as a region, we have to come together and look for those opportunities. What are those opportunities?" he said.
Fellow panelist Vikram Agrawal, president and CEO of Levrx Technology, said programs and resources like incubator space were key in launching his first company, Etransmedia Technology, out of RPI, as it was a shared ecosystem on campus that allowed entrepreneurs to come together. The space was founded in 1980 and closed in 2010.
"RPI has to take the lead. And most of the local companies that are successful you can trace back over the last 30 years, all originated in the incubator," Agrawal said.
"RPI had that model," he continued. "I think we need to go back to that."
In all, Schmidt emphasized a regionalist mindset in growing the ecosystem of innovation in the Capital Region.
"When we're arguing about whether the next opportunity should be in Cohoes, or Troy, or Guilderland ... that's small ball. That's really small ball. The leadership in the region needs to be able to think in a less parochial way," Schmidt said."
Albany software company launches AI content platform to compete with ChatGPT: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...e-chatgpt.html
From the article: "An Albany-based software company has launched an artificial intelligence product that intends to compete with the likes of ChatGPT.
Nowigence, located on Broadway in Albany, introduced Lille.ai this week. Using links, topics and documents, the software extracts information and generates content that can be posted for blogs, newsletters and social media. (It's capable of posting directly to Twitter and LinkedIn.)
The program, which has been in development since 2017, spawned from a University at Albany research paper about using AI to extract information from doctors' notes.
The launch comes at a time when the uses for AI are constantly evolving. For example, ChatGPT, created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, launched in November 2022 and has taken the tech scene by storm — it reached 100 million monthly active users in just two months, making it the fastest growing consumer application in history, according to research by UBS.
Nowigence founder and CEO Anoop Bhatia says his company's product, Lille.ai, sits apart from ChatGPT because it has a niche in a huge market.
After Lille.ai generates content with a list of sources, the user can customize what gets included in the final product, meaning sources can be added or deleted and the post will regenerate. Lille.ai also automatically optimizes the content for search engines.
Potential use cases for the program include education and medicine. Lille.ai can create notes from documents, like school readings, Bhatia said.
Other potential uses include creating content for sales, marketing, research, branding, corporate communication, executive-level influencers and advertising teams.
"We can save you a whole lot of time. We generated this content for you in two minutes instead of you spending five hours to do that," Bhatia said.
ChatGPT is a large language model, meaning the AI was trained with large amounts of data to predict the next word in a sentence. It can write poems, have conversations and answer encyclopedia-style questions to prompts it hasn't encountered before. But it can also provide answers that are made up and passed off as accurate — an act that's become known as a "hallucination."
Bhatia said Lille.ai doesn't hallucinate because it pulls directly from the content supplied to it, and it provides the sources from which it built on.
Lille.ai uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze data and make recommendations for content generation.
"We are solving two problems for the world. We have to first create the content and the content has to be guided by you when you select the perspective before it creates an essay. It's different from ChatGPT or Google Bard just because they can hallucinate," he said.
Bhatia said the company was able to launch Lille.ai for about $6 million, when comparable benchmarks have needed about $120 million.
That's a small fraction of the potential piece of the market Nowigence could grab.
"We look at the niche that we are playing in and we think that the total market opportunity is close to about $330 billion. But when we narrow it down to our space, we say even if it's just $30 billion, then we strive for even 5%." he said.
Albany real estate broker Tracy Metzer is an investor in Nowigence and is on the board. She said that at the time of her and her husband's original investment in 2017, AI was an emerging technology, but she saw potential in the solutions the company was offering.
"It's really been friends and family that have invested over these years to be able to help push Nowigence forward from a technology standpoint. Developing that, it takes time. We had a small team. We've changed some of the people, with respect to the staff. And it's been a learning curve as in any startup, but we do believe that we're here at the right time," she said.
Lille.ai is available for public use with a free version. Pricing for businesses includes plans starting at $15.95 per month."
This upstate investment startup has Chris Paul, other pro athletes as investors: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...tment-app.html
"Former Siena College basketball star Michael Haddix Jr. is positioning his startup for the next phase of growth.
Haddix co-founded Scout, a financial investment/literacy platform for young athletes, that's now based in Clifton Park. Haddix started Scout in 2021 as he and his family moved back upstate from New York City.
The company has raised $2.7 million with initial investors including NBA stars Chris Paul and Jimmer Fredette as well as some NFL players. Now, he plans to team up with schools and their athletes, raise another round of funding, and complete a nationally connected accelerator program.
As a former student-athlete and the son of a former NFL running back, Haddix grew up around athletes learning how to navigate coming into money.
"A lot of times, it's their first experience with money. You've never gotten money. You've never done taxes before. There's all these new things, and because you do really well on the basketball court or the football field or the soccer field, it doesn't necessarily mean you understand this other stuff," he said. "And for me, it feels like when it comes to preparing those players financially, it's been overlooked because the goal has always been making them the best player they can be. My goal is to help them make sure if they never play again, that they're in a better position when they leave school than when they got there."
After graduating from Siena in 2007, Haddix pursued a career in finance and personal money management, during which he started managing money for athletes including Paul, Steph Curry and Michael Phelps. That sparked his first business, Empower3d, a consulting business that taught financial literacy to college and professional athletes.
"I'd go to University of Kentucky, University of Iowa, Rutgers, even pro teams like the Las Vegas Raiders, the NBA, the New York Giants, New York Jets, and I would create this really cool programming for the young athletes to help teach them finance," he said.
Those conversations with his 50 clients about how stocks work and why they should invest led to athletes asking the next question: How do I get started?
Haddix's newest business, Scout, seeks to answer that. Over the last two years, Haddix and his team have been building up Scout, an investment platform geared toward athletes to build longterm wealth.
Part of the build up has included beta testing over the last eight months, collecting feedback from college athletes. Haddix said the introduction of name, image, likeness policies makes financial literacy for college athletes even more relevant. The policies allow all NCAA D1, D2 and D3 student-athletes to be compensated for the use of their NIL for promotional purposes.
"We really wanted to build a product that understood the specific needs of athletes, college athletes in particular, that are in a unique space right now," he said. "College athletes are now being paid, now there's a ton of money in the system, but unfortunately, there's not a lot of protection there ... I think we all hear the adage, 'Most college athletes don't go pro,' which is true. But now that you're making money at 18 and 19 years old, if you do it right, and you don't go pro, you have a bunch of money to kickstart your life."
Scout will partner with athletic programs and be offered as a service to athletes. It's starting with Siena College in the next few weeks.
In its next phase of growth, Scout is looking to raise another $3 million and has been selected to participate in Northwestern Mutual's Black Founder Accelerator Program. Scout is one of five companies nationwide chosen for the cohort.
The startups in the program are eligible to receive a $100,000 investment, access to venture capital partners, individualized coaching from Northwestern Mutual executive mentors, and inclusion in a curated 12-week program. The program is run in partnership with gener8tor, a venture capital fund and startup accelerator.
Haddix said the accelerator gives the company access to pockets of advisers across the country in a variety of fields.
"They've even helped us think about pieces of our business that we hadn't thought about," he said. "Especially because they have 100 years of experience in this space that we're able to kind of leverage that to think through, 'OK, what makes sense? What can we fold into our product? What experience do they have and how can we learn from a data perspective?'"
(Was a good big many for the Saint during a good era of the program: https://twitter.com/MichaelHaddixJr )
Noa Conger Simons wants to grow the Albany region's startup ecosystem: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...sociation.html
"Noa Conger Simons has worked in venture capital internationally, but brought her experience back to the Hudson Valley where she grew up.
Conger Simons leads the Upstate Capital Association, an organization that seeks to improve deal flow by connecting investors with companies seeking funding. It’s a statewide association that includes angel investors, venture capital investors, growth-equity investors, private-equity investors, financiers and asset-based lenders.
As part of her work, she gets an overhead view of the state’s startup scene. Conger Simons shared her thoughts on the status of the Capital Region’s innovation ecosystem and what would take it to the next level.
How did you get into this kind of work? I worked in a family office for over a decade out in the Boston area, so I learned the venture capital business from my mentor, who owned that family office. And we started a venture capital fund in Shanghai together. I ran a couple of companies for him and had a couple of potential startup, deep tech, research science projects with him before he retired, and I came back to the Hudson Valley.
What’s your take on the Capital Region startup scene? I think the Capital Region is interesting. There are certainly a lot of smart people, a lot of the ingredients that it seems like people need to have healthy and thriving innovation economies. What I observe, though, is that the silos are still pretty strong, and that the ability to really work together has not been exploited as much as it has been in other places.
I do think there’s a real lack of funding also, and not just early stage capital from private investors. [As an example,] I think government support has made Buffalo very strong through the Buffalo Billion. Likewise, Luminate and Grow New York and 76 West each have their own sort of pools of capital that sponsored and funded those accelerator, business-attraction competitions.
The Capital Region hasn’t had that kind of support and that kind of cohesive coming together to build something that I’ve seen in those other regions around particular investment theses or particular innovation theses.
Let’s say funding wasn’t a problem here. What else would we need? I think you need leadership, right? Money is great. But if you don’t have people, then money doesn’t go anywhere. So I think the region needs people who have the connections and have the ethos around collaboration as a central principle for a successful, thriving ecosystem.
Who’s the ideal candidate to lead our innovation community? I don’t think there’s one archetype. I think that those people can come from different places. I think probably academia is less likely just from a likely standpoint, in my experience. I think that person needs to also have credibility with the business and innovation and investor community, so it’s somebody who has the networks and the connections and understands the competing needs of different groups to be able to put things together in ways that makes sense.
You can look at the structure of how 43 North [in western New York] came to be. They engaged with a guy named Jordan Levy, who was from Buffalo, had deep ties to the region, was a successful venture capitalist with national and international ties. And he came together with local people who live there and who wanted to take this portion of the Buffalo Billion dollars that they had and put it to work in a business attraction vehicle, and they built this competition that has had a lot of successful results.
Startup founders here often say they have to look beyond the region for funding opportunities. How much of an issue is getting an investor from outside the area? There’s a saying that he who writes the check makes the rules, and so one of the issues that you run into is poaching. Where if you’re writing a big enough check, you probably swing a big enough hammer that if you have a desire for that company to relocate, and they don’t have a strong enough strategic reason to be in this region, that they’ll get pulled somewhere else.
I think it’s absolutely an attraction game to have professional institutional investors looking at companies in upstate New York overall, particularly in the Capital Region, where you don’t have high-flying success stories to tell like you do in Buffalo. It’s very much an attraction game, so what you want to do is attract the right investors who aren’t going to take those companies and pull them into other places where they’re headquartered.
One of the things that I heard about, that my impression was at least, that it was quite successful is in Michigan. Michigan state government paid the Michigan Venture Association, an analogous organization to Upstate Capital, to manage a program where they recruited institutional investors to hire and maintain an office and keep a staff person on site in their city or town. Michigan did this across all of Michigan, and had maybe five or 10 investors with offices in Boston and Silicon Valley, New York and Austin, wherever, and then said, “If you open an office and have a person who sits in that office, every day, we’re going to pay the salary of that person, and we’ll give you the rent.” And so they basically made it very easy for those investment organizations to say yes. I think about that as a strategy for investor attraction."
(She is a Chatham native, that lives in New Paltz)
Troy startup lands partnership to pilot technology in emergency vehicles: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...t-madison.html
"United Aircraft Technologies will test its technology in ground vehicles this summer.
The Troy-based company makes a device that holds electrical wiring in place and monitors the health of an electrical system. It was founded with an aircraft in mind, but the goal is to use the device in other types of vehicles or even the electrical grid.
The city of Madison, Wisconsin, is implementing UAT's Electric Health Usage Monitoring System (e-HUMS) in two emergency vehicles: a firetruck and an ambulance.
The non-metal device that's part of the system is lighter than traditionally used clamps, and it takes less time and effort to secure because its two pieces click together without the use of tools.
Sensors in the UAT clamp use AI to map, monitor and diagnose specific issues within an electrical system, which users can view through a software application. UAT's technology can monitor existing electrical systems and batteries, providing performance data and tracking fluctuations in power consumption, leading to reduced downtime caused by electrical faults and wire degradation.
Evaguel Rhysing, CEO of UAT, said the pilot with Madison is a critical step in validating the company's product that has been in development since the company was founded in 2018.
"It feels fulfilling, it feels validating ... It says, 'This is also going to be in the aircraft. Look at what it does in the ground vehicles. Imagine what it can do in the aircrafts,'" she said.
The goal of the technology is to make maintenance easier: Rhysing said maintenance can take up to 92 hours of labor to visually inspect miles of wiring for defects. The e-HUMS technology cuts that service down to an hour, and the electrical currents can be monitored from software.
"The fault is detected, it is diagnosed, it is localized, so that you can then repair it all in less than an hour. So it took what used to be the last thing you check, it could be the first thing you check, right? Because with literally two clicks you have checked the electrical wiring," she said.
The technology seeks to help crews monitor systems in real time, especially as ground vehicles become more electrified and electrically complex.
The Madison Fire Department comprises 14 fire stations and a population of over 250,000. The department added the first-ever electric fire truck in active duty in North America, a Pierce Volterra electric pumper, to its fleet in 2021. The pilot with UAT is set to begin by the end of July 2023.
Other pilots in a variety of industries are in the pipeline to help further refine the technology.
"What we're trying to showcase with this pilot is the impact that our product can have on the maintenance or the reliability of the vehicle, so it is a case study that then we're going to publish," Rhysing said.
Daryian Rhysing, UAT's chief technology officer, founded the company after years of military service securing traditional clamps, which caused carpal tunnel syndrome and led to the loss of his job.
In 2021, UAT won a $1.1 million contract from the U.S. Army to develop its product. UAT was one of 13 small businesses from across the country selected by the Army for a Small Business Innovation Research phase two grant toward technological innovations.
UAT has a contract with the Department of Defense for aircraft technology and has, in total, raised over $2 million in private equity funding."
Albany has two star biotech companies. This company sees room for more.: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...ny-growth.html
"The Capital Region has long had two biotech giants — Regeneron and Curia Global (formerly AMRI). Now, a new startup sees room for other companies to grow here.
Diodem Therapeutics has developed a drug candidate it says could help treat conditions that range from Alzheimer’s disease to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. The molecule mimics the hormone leptin, which is involved in the regulation of the body's energy.
The company was formed after research by Patricia Grasso, a professor in the department of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at Albany Medical College, discovered how to more efficiently make a multipurpose molecule cross the blood-brain barrier. Then, Diodem built out an executive team, including Robert Beckman, a veteran executive of biotech companies.
Beckman said the Capital Region is growing an ecosystem of biotech research, which has the potential to attract more companies.
"There's no substitute for collaboration because what you're then able to do is leverage the expertise of more than one institution. … The development of these products, it's very, very complex. It requires an incredible amount of knowledge and expertise, as well as capital, and the ability to really just drive these things forward," Beckman said. "So nobody does it on their own. And to the extent that the Capital District is well-positioned in terms of having the range of resources that are necessary, that it clearly can become a winning formula."
The Albany region’s biotech cluster is still in early stages.
In fiscal year 2022, the region's institutions received over $72 million in National Institutes of Health grants — NIH funding is one indicator of a cluster’s activity. The nation’s major biotech hubs — such as Boston — measure their annual grant totals in the billions.
But there is industry growth here. Regeneron is a prime example: Its companywide annual revenue grew 17%, to $12.17 billion, in 2022, and its local workforce will exceed 4,000 when its second campus in Rensselaer County is complete.
There are also academic institutions that are working on new research and workforce training.
Michelle Lewis is executive director of the Center of Biopharmaceutical Education and Training at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The college recently acquired a large building near its campus on New Scotland Avenue in Albany to fill with biotech, biomedical and biopharma corporate partners, giving students the opportunity to participate in advanced research and workforce training.
Lewis says the close proximity of institutions like the pharmacy college and other academic institutions, as well as Albany Medical College, the region’s hospitals and state labs provides a backbone for innovation.
"You have your basic research, which that's where a lot of the innovation happens, and people don't fully appreciate that. They always think of companies as driving innovation. And that is true, but the academic research labs play a critical role in that and to further refine that, to have a medical college and a hospital and a pharmacy school. You've got those folks interacting with patients directly and they understand what the patient needs," she said.
The Albany region also has an advantage compared to some of the major biotech clusters around the country such as Boston or San Diego: It’s significantly more affordable.
"Living standards that the Boston area has now rivals that of the greater San Francisco, New York, as an area being unaffordable. Young scientists cannot afford to buy a new home in the Boston area without commuting some exorbitant amount of time," said Stephen Chang, Diodem Therapeutics' CEO. "Upstate New York, Albany area, with Saratoga and all that, it's affordable, it's still affordable living. You hear many more people say 'I bought a house' than 'I'm renting a house.'"
Part of the challenge now is to grow the biotech workforce in the region. Lewis says doing so will help keep companies like Regeneron and attract new arrivals.
"We have to be able to supply them with trained individuals, skilled individuals, you need that workforce pool or why move here? You can have a great idea but if you don't have the folks to really staff it and implement it, it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't grow," she said. "My objective here in the region is to grow this pipeline of talent."
Diodem is just at the beginning of its endeavor to grow. It's looking to raise $5 million, and it's awaiting human trials. The company sees its molecule, DIOD-4, as a way to simultaneously improve energy balance, blood glucose control and cognitive function in people.
"What we believe now is that we have something that can do much more than just energy balance, appetite, maintaining weight ... this peptide is a goldmine," Grasso said."
Saratoga restaurants testing tip platform for kitchen staff: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...net-river.html
"Saratoga Springs IT company Garnet River is developing a web application to collect tips for back-of-house restaurant workers.
"Apron" allows restaurant customers to send tips to kitchen staff separate from their bill. It's being piloted in about seven restaurants, including Henry Street Taproom and Seneca in Saratoga.
It's long been a point of contention that servers and bartenders can leave their shifts with extra cash, even more on busy nights, while kitchen staff don't see a financial bonus for working harder on busier days.
But in New York state, it's against the law for front-of-house workers to share their tip pool with the back of house. Apron aims to be a way to incentivize those excluded employees.
"Front of house are getting much lower hourly wages compared to back of house. But oftentimes they end up making a lot more money," developer Noah Arciero said. "And so the idea is that if we can create a small incentivization for back-of-the-house employees on top of the wages they're already getting, it will help restaurants hire. It'll help them retain their staff. And now it's actually giving them some extra motivation to put out quality work on a nightly basis."
Restaurants put out a QR code on tables and receipts that lead to their staff's Apron pool. Customers can scan the code and leave a tip of any size for the kitchen staff through via a credit card or virtual payments like Apple Pay.
Members of the staff can join the Apron account and can split the pool virtually. Employees can access tax forms to report the additional income through Apron, so it has no effect on the restaurant's payroll.
The service is free for restaurants to use, but Apron will collect a yet-to-be-determined fee from the pool.
Henry Street Taproom was the first restaurant to test Apron, and owner Ryan McFadden was brought into the project to consult on the service from a restaurant perspective. McFadden said the service hasn't affected other staff member's tips.
"It's been working out great. There's been no issues with it being a problem for servers or bartenders or hurting their tips. It's just been extra gravy for the kitchen," he said.
McFadden said customers are used to using QR code menus due to the pandemic, so it's a normal pattern for them to sit down and automatically scan it.
Restaurants have been facing rising costs since the pandemic, but McFadden actually sees this as a way to keep costs down.
"One of the reasons that prices are going up is because of food costs and also labor costs. So this is a way to — not that people are necessarily thinking about this when they go out — but it actually might make your bill less if you can kind of control the tipping," he said. "Otherwise, the restaurant just has to eat those costs itself and you're going to pay one way or the other."
And so far, customers seem to be engaged. Arciero said Apron users have been tipping above the suggested amount of $5, which is not tied to the customers' bill. The average tip is above $9.
Arciero said he sees Apron having use cases outside of restaurants, like at craft breweries and entertainment venues for musicians.
Overall, McFadden sees it as a step in the right direction for the industry.
"It's a historically been a problem in the service industry that there's such a gap in the front and the back of the house. And this is a way to try to help ease that," he said. "And I think it's coming around the perfect time with wages rising, food costs rising. It's just another way to get the kitchen staff paid and feel like they're more a part of the whole team."
RPI'S REGIONAL PLANS, Martin Schmidt, RPI’s new president, has seen firsthand what innovation and collaboration can do for a local economy. He now wants to cultivate both in the Albany region.: https://www.bizjournals.com/albany/i...l-biotech.html
"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s president, Martin Schmidt, spent the first six months in his new role listening.
In conversations with everyone from local RPI alumni to the CEO of Albany International Airport, he has been gathering feedback from the community.
Schmidt, himself an RPI alumnus, was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 40 years. He’d ascended to the job of provost, the institution’s chief academic and budget officer. During his career, he’s started seven companies and had a front row seat to the development of an internationally recognized cluster of tech companies near the university.
With all that experience, he sees great potential in the Albany region — if people here can learn to work together in meaningful ways.
“When we’re arguing about whether the next opportunity should be in Cohoes, or Troy, or Guilderland ... that’s small ball. That’s really small ball. The leadership in the region needs to be able to think in a less parochial way,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt succeeded Shirley Ann Jackson as president of RPI. She retired last year after 23 years in the job and left the university in a strong financial position, having raised over $2 billion during her tenure.
Jackson also made the controversial decision to close RPI’s startup incubator space, which had helped launch several notable companies. It was replaced with a virtual program.
Vikram Agrawal started the health care IT company Etransmedia Technology with his brother, Vikash, in the incubator in 1999. They grew it to more than 400 people before it was acquired in 2017.
Agrawal said at the time of the incubator’s closure in 2010 that he feared the area would miss out on future economic development opportunities.
“I could not have started my company without the incubator,” Agrawal said then. “This could hurt innovation.”
Since the closure, Agrawal said the collaborative startup ecosystem has diminished. Startups have dispersed across the region, some don’t stay once they’re successful, and the ones that are here don’t know each other.
“Even in downtown Troy, where Vikash and I work and go to the office every day, I don’t know 90% of the companies,” he said. “Being an entrepreneur is a lonely journey. It’s not easy. And when you deal with other peers, when you kind of get to hang out with other entrepreneurs, it fosters a sense of ecosystem.”
Now, over a decade later, Schmidt is talking about reinvigorating RPI’s role in the local startup scene to help foster those connections again.
“That’s sort of the backbone of the strategic plan,” he says. “By seeing the region flourish, you can see those opportunities being created.”
Engage the region
Agrawal believes that RPI has to be the region’s leader in collaboration.
“RPI is the MIT of our area,” he says.
When Martin Schmidt arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1981, Kendall Square was empty parking lots, abandoned factories and a diner. It’s now one of the world’s leading centers for biotech research, thanks in part to collaboration between institutions such as Harvard and MIT, which saw potential in the emerging fields of molecular biology and genomics.
So it would be easy to say that Schmidt should take what he learned there about institutional collaboration and innovation ecosystems and copy and paste it here in Albany.
But the Capital Region isn’t Boston. It doesn’t, for example, get billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding. Schmidt acknowledges that. But he does see possibility.
“I think what RPI’s role can be is to try and help facilitate the convening of these organizations to think, ‘Where do we want to go?’” he said. “There’s no way you’re going to replicate Kendall Square anywhere else, not in the near term, just because of the density of life scientists in that area.”
But his biotech connections in Boston are facing a challenge: manufacturing their product. He thinks the Albany region can help with that.
Schmidt is fascinated by Regeneron’s manufacturing presence here. He sees a recipe for a biotech manufacturing hub in the Capital Region.
“Somebody [in the Boston area] said to me that, ‘I had to hire 300 scientists in a year, and there was only one place in the world I could do that.’ But when they go into production, it’s challenging to do that in the greater Boston area. And so to me, that’s a real opportunity for the region ... kind of a perfect example of where we can all get together. “
In fact, Schmidt’s already asking company leaders if they’d consider manufacturing in the Albany region. Doing so would build on the workforce already here and help retain talent in the area.
“The conversations I’ve had back in Boston with some of these leaders is: ‘Would you consider putting your plants here versus New Hampshire or wherever?’ And I think they definitely would be on receipt for that,” he said.
Biopharmaceuticals, in particular, are one area where there’s potential for collaboration here.
Michelle Lewis is executive director of the Center for Biopharmaceutical Education and Training at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Her goal is to grow the pipeline of talent that biopharmaceutical companies can pull from.
The college is already working with Hudson Valley Community College on that pipeline: Students from HVCC can continue their education at the pharmacy college with a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in biomanufacturing and bioprocessing.
The college also offers a postgraduate fellowship with Curia Global and the Food and Drug Administration involving all three institutions.
Lewis said she sees RPI growing its external relationships as an important development for other higher education institutions in the area.
“I think we have all the pieces here,“ she said. “All of these partners can really leverage each other’s resources and I would encourage everyone to look for ways to partner. I’m a firm believer that teamwork makes the dream work.”
Build the runway
Downtown Troy is currently home to a handful of players in the local innovation economy: The Tech Valley Center of Gravity manufacturing incubator, video game studios like Velan Studios and 1st Playable, software companies like Levrx, and artificial intelligence company Scan2Plan, among others.
It’s part of what sold Martin Schmidt on the opportunity to be RPI’s next president.
Looking forward, Schmidt sees more opportunities with semiconductors. The Albany region already has GlobalFoundries and the research hub at the Albany Nanotech Complex. The federal government is about to pour billions of dollars into the industry, and Albany is a leading candidate for a new semiconductor research center that could bring 1,000 jobs.
“I can see the shoots coming out of the ground. ... Each one of these looks like massive opportunities for really moving the needle for the region,” he said. “Knowing that an institution like RPI can play a central role in driving that, which will have to go well beyond my time as president, but you have to get started, that was one compelling opportunity. “
Pushing the needle further could come in the form of partnering area companies with startups, he said. Traditionally, research was commercialized by transferring industry-sponsored research within universities to a company. But now, larger companies see startups as a way to bring in new innovations.
To facilitate that, Schmidt calls for “building the runway.” It starts on campus, and would likely involve reintroducing an incubator or something similar, he explained during a panel discussion at RPI in April.
Vikash Agrawal, the co-founder of Etransmedia, pointed to companies like Velan Studios and a majority of Troy’s gaming ecosystem, as well as GlobalSpec, MapInfo and Curia Global (formerly Albany Molecular Research Inc.) as evidence that RPI had a successful translational hub before.
“Every major successful technology company in town ... the entrepreneurs had some connections with the incubator center,” he said. “They were young grads when they started. But as they grew older, they built the companies, they progressed.”
Next would be connecting that runway to the rest of the region so graduates have the opportunity to stay here, Schmidt said.
“We should make it possible. Large companies historically have engaged with universities, and RPI enjoys some really strong partnerships with companies like IBM, and GlobalFoundries. And so I think we just have to build the capacity to do that at a larger scale.”
Grow the pipeline from RPI
Another avenue Schmidt sees for more closely engaging RPI with the Albany region is finding more ways to connect graduates with jobs in the area.
The university is well known for providing an education in some of today’s most in-demand subject areas. But many graduates leave for opportunities elsewhere.
For example, computer scientists are highly sought after, and Schmidt says that about 30% of the incoming freshmen class intend to major in the field.
“That suggests that in a little more than three years, RPI is going to be handing out 600 diplomas in computer science from one of the most rigorous computer science curriculums in the country,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be nice if some fraction of them stayed in the Capital Region? And so what are the opportunities we’re going to create for them to do that?”
There is already an extensive network of RPI alumni and associated companies here for graduates to join.
The Agrawals are a prime example. After selling Etransmedia, they started Levrx in downtown Troy. The company makes software that allows patients to more easily shop around for prescriptions.
Companies like Levrx could directly benefit from RPI connecting students with local job opportunities.
“I think RPI has to engage back and figure out how to take advantage of the local software companies because they have a large program and every undergrad has to do a six-month internship as part of the curriculum, so they should take advantage of the local companies and vice versa,” Vikram Agrawal said.
Growing the talent pipeline won’t be the domain of one university. Each institution in the Capital Region has its strengths, and combining those strengths can lead to regional success. At Levrx, Vikram Agrawal said all the engineering talent is from RPI, and employees in finance and marketing come from Siena College.
Michelle Lewis, from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, also sees that pipeline as a group effort. While her programs are focused on building a biomanufacturing workforce, the combined resources of local universities can create a widely skilled group in the region.
“We can move and row in the same direction. We just get stronger and stronger attractiveness to people looking to start new businesses, people wanting to relocate from Boston or New York City or California, [to] where the cost of living is lower. And they have everything they need,” she said.
How he’ll get started
Schmidt said the first step to implementing these regional ideas is to make a plan.
“What we have to do is get everybody together, and then have conversations with the government, local and state, about what can we do as a region to promote it,” Schmidt said.
Greater societal forces could play to the region’s advantage too. Schmidt cited a recent New York Times article reporting that young graduates are leaving America’s largest cities for more affordable urban environments, a phenomenon he sees as another chance for the region to attract people. He’s also optimistic about Albany’s chances to get a piece of the National Semiconductor Technology Center.
To kickstart it all, Schmidt said the university’s bicentennial in 2024 will be the moment to not only reflect on what it has accomplished so far, but also the opportunities that lie ahead.
“There are so many things that are moving in the right direction for this region and, honestly, that was not an insignificant reason for me thinking about this being a nice opportunity for me as the next stage in my career.”
Also...
Companies that grew out of RPI
These companies were either part of the university’s incubator or were started by RPI alumni in the Capital Region.
- Vicarious Visions
- Etransmedia Technology
- MapInfo
- Curia Global (formerly AMRI)
- GlobalSpec
- Ecovative
- 1st Playable
- Crystal IS
- Agora Games
- BullEx
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