The Tech Garden is an incubator for new technology-related businesses and is celebrating its 10-year anniversary in Syracuse. The Tech Garden offers space for start-up companies to lease, as well as professional mentoring and investment capital.
Leane Eckelberg is the CEO of HoverStat which does drone roof inspections for solar panel installations. She went on a call with a solar technician and when they got to the house, it started to rain.
“The solar tech doesn't want to get up on the roof. It's unsafe. His employer certainly does not want to get up on that roof," Eckelberg said. "So this is where a HoverStat solution comes into play."
The idea is to fly a drone, which takes aerial video footage, and then process the data into a full solar assessment.
HoverStat was just one of many start-ups that pitched their ideas at a competition for cash prizes, celebrating The Tech Garden's anniversary.
The winner was an app called Mogee from Syracuse which makes animated emoji faces for smartphone text messages.
Seth Mulligan is the vice president of innovation services for CenterState CEO and The Tech Garden is an affiliate.
“The Tech Garden is now two buildings, we've had a really high occupancy, we've had a lot more events, we're doing a lot more investing and we've had some really successful graduates," Mulligan said. "We always want them to stay here, some of them don't, but a lot of them are.”
Mulligan said one way to get companies to stay is to develop innovation districts in Syracuse.
"Having certain graduation pathways for our companies, like other buildings they can land to next, I think some of those are going to be the next wave of the next 10 years," Mulligan said.
Mulligan said The Tech Garden does lots of programming he would like to see continue such as coaching, hackathons and seed investment. The Tech Garden invests almost one million dollars in other companies every year.
