SYRACUSE — The five finalists in the Genius NY program at the Tech Garden are involved in the process that will prepare them for pitch night in April as they pursue investment funding. Genius NY is a business-accelerator program at CenterState CEO’s Tech Garden. Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New […]
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SYRACUSE — The five finalists in the Genius NY program at the Tech Garden are involved in the process that will prepare them for pitch night in April as they pursue investment funding.
Genius NY is a business-accelerator program at CenterState CEO’s Tech Garden. Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York.
These startup drone and Internet of Things (IoT) companies will participate in the year-long program and will compete for a total of $3 million in direct investment, including a grand prize of $1 million and four $500,000 awards.
Empire State Development (ESD) announced the finalists back on Dec. 11.
The firms moved into the Tech Garden in early January and have spent the past few weeks working on a customer-discovery phase, says Jeff Fuchsberg, director of Genius NY.
In that phase, the companies are working to validate that there is a market for their product, getting in front of who they think their customers are, and finding out how the product might benefit the customers in some way.
“And trying to validate that there is a market for what you’re providing and what you’re providing actually solves their problem,” says Fuchsberg, who spoke with CNYBJ on Feb. 3.
The customer-discovery phase will continue through the second week of February. He also noted that some of the participating companies have had a few years of operations and “recognize the value” in the process, especially if they’re trying to break into a new market segment.
The firms will then focus on their business plan and how they will build, market, and operate a company around their minimum viable product.
“That is really what gets their company up and running, off the ground, and that’s when you get out of planning and into executing,” says Fuchsberg.
Once the Genius NY finalists are set with their respective business case, they then focus on their pitch deck for finals night.
“The pitch deck is your PowerPoint presentation or whatever visual collateral you want to have and then there’s the live, in-person presentation that goes alongside it,” he adds.
That process starts near the end of March when the firms will meet with pitch coaches to craft their presentation “and the art of storytelling because that’s what is really going to resonate with investors going forward,” he says.
Throughout the program, the finalists will have meetings with community leaders, mentors, and advisors from leading companies in Central New York while also participating in tourism activities. The goal is to encourage all participants to stay in the region following the conclusion of the program.
The finalists
ESD provided the following description of each Genius NY finalist:
Eget Liber of Syracuse uses an autonomous, semi-submersible remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to mitigate the life-cycle of cyanobacterium, also known as blue-green algae, in freshwater lakes. The ROV is designed to receive command coordinates from an aerial drone, which is configured to identify algae blooms via spectral analysis.
BotsAndUs of the United Kingdom automates customer service and operations tasks across the retail, hospitality, and travel sectors with a fleet of fully autonomous robots that work with employees to serve more customers as well as capture real-time data. They provide a full-stack solution of hardware, software, support, and data manipulation.
DroneSeed of Seattle, Washington seeks to make reforestation scalable and “make a dent” in carbon emissions. Using drone swarms, DroneSeed plants trees at a rate that is “six times more efficient” than manual labor planting. The process decreases the response time to reforest and increases the total acres of reforestation that can be done per year by simplifying the supply chain.
Geopipe of New York City creates instant, immersive virtual copies of real cities for gaming, simulation, and architecture. Its machine-learning algorithms generate 3D maps and models with every tree, building, road, and window labeled and realistically reproduced. These images are then licensed monthly, annually or via revenue sharing.
Skyy Network of Australia has a flight-information management system that uses an open-source data exchange network built on blockchain. It allows UAS (unmanned aircraft system) service suppliers and air navigation service providers to share and verify safety critical airspace data to allow drones to operate beyond visual line of sight.