Launch NY has been awarded a $2.5M grant from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation. The largest single grant award received since Launch NY’s inception, these funds will support a 24-month initiative to optimize the impact of the current venture development organization’s infrastructure with capacity-building and strategic planning elements. “With the introduction of our new seed fund side-by-side with our established pro bono mentoring services, the timing of this award couldn’t be better to fully scale up our support for startup businesses,” said Marnie LaVigne, PhD, president and CEO of Launch NY. To read the full press release, click here.

Euphony Inc, led by Fuz Eller in Syracuse, develops a text-to-speech technology that is more user friendly through life-like speech for machines and software. Euphony’s success in this field has led to work to assist speech therapists and simulation with pilots and air traffic controllers. Recently, Fuz and his team received $50,000 in funding when they were named winners of the Second Round of the Syracuse Tech Garden’s accelerator program, Germinator.

“Paul Brooks, our assigned Launch NY EIR, encouraged me to join Launch NY, just as I was wondering if I was stuck in my own echo chamber regarding business planning and client development. Most recently, Paul has been able to connect me to the NYS Science and Technology Law Center, through a partnership with Launch NY, which has helped in performing a prior art search on our intellectual property” – Fuz Eller, President, Euphony, Inc.

Op-Smart is amanufacturing operations management software company located in Buffalo, NY.  Op-Smart has been installed on multiple production lines for multiple companies, providing significant improvements in production efficiencies.  Their single platform provides extreme ease of installation and use.  It includes automated data collection as well as integration with existing business systems.  It offers planning, scheduling, execution, production reporting, activity based costing, maintenance, and much more.  Op-Smart plans to be on 100 more production lines over the next 18 months. Op-Smart has been working with their Launch NY EIR, Al Culliton, since March 2016.

“Launch NY has been extremely helpful in the maturation of the Op-Smart business concept.  Al Culliton, as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence, has acted as a general business mentor as well as an investment advisor.  Op-Smart approached Launch NY with a specific need to refine its product distribution and go to market strategy.  Al was able to facilitate the emergence of a simple, sensible and, most importantly, executable game plan” – Kevin Hagerty, President, Op-Smart.

Is Launch NY a fit for you?
Launch NY provides entrepreneurs experienced mentoring using best practice processes and connections to specialized resources both in and beyond the Upstate NY ecosystem.Thus preparing you to compete for and win the funding and additional resources needed to move forward. Apply Now! >

Ed is an accomplished Sales, Marketing and Business executive with nearly 30 years of global experience working with emerging technologies. Over the course of his career, Ed has held positions with Fortune 500 as well as start-up companies in the areas of software, telecommunications, and health services. He has held executive level positions in the area of sales, marketing, and product management and has a comprehensive understanding of scalable growth and bringing new products and technologies to market. He’s worked in the private as well as government/military sectors, with a significant percentage business conducted in Europe and Asia. For more on Ed and our EIRs, please visit https://launchny.org/who-we-are/