High-tech business owners, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, investors, and others are in the Buffalo Convention Center for the New York State Innovation Summit. Tuesday and Wednesday, participants will have a chance to connect with those who can provide resources to help their businesses get to the next level, and into the marketplace.
“We try to get everyone under one roof,” said Elena Garuc, executive director of FuzeHub, an Albany based center which works to unite potential partners. “A lot of the organizations here are state-funded programs, universities, not-for-profits, accelerators, incubators that are all here to kind of help this innovation ecosystem move forward, providing services, providing grants, providing experts, and just opportunities for these companies to tap into. That's the whole purpose of the Innovation Summit.”
Activities and themes included in the agenda include improving one’s pitch for seed dollars, identifying the right metrics for evaluating the startup, and common mistakes made by startups.
Among the companies present is Buffalo-based Axenica Bioscience, which works to ensure viral testing is as up-to-date and accurate as possible.
“We serve the IVD, which is in vitro diagnostics manufacturers, who actually develop those tests and need to keep testing them to make sure they're accurate,” said Kelly Cycon, president and co-founder of the company. “We also serve the clinical labs and public health labs that are actually seeing the patients and need to be sure that the tests that they're using can detect the circulating viruses of today.”
Joining Cycon was Axenica’s CEO, Naveen Bangia, who explained that the way they help ensure accuracy of viral testing is by providing the pathogens those products test.
“We grow, we source the virus from our partners, who have the recent viruses, flu and COVID, for example, and then we bring it in house to our lab in Buffalo and produce it, create a product out of it, and make sure it's well characterized so that its identity is known with sequence, as well as how much is there and how effective it is,” Bangia said.
Axenica is one of several companies that, as part of the Innovation Summit, are participating in a commercialization competition. It’s a contest in which companies have a chance to best demonstrate their readiness for the commercial market. The top prize is $150,000.
Hope Knight, commissioner, president and CEO of Empire State Development, says that money can make a big difference for a startup. But the state also offers other resources that can help.
“We want to make sure that folks know that New York is at the leading edge of the innovation economy,” Knight said. “ESD and the state invest in a comprehensive network of assets to help innovators, entrepreneurs, innovative companies in developing their technology, bringing it to scale, and then commercializing that technology to go to market. We want to highlight all of the incredible things that are happening in the state with respect to innovation.”
The competition winners will be announced Wednesday afternoon.
