The Albany Business Review covers a lot of successful people later in their careers. The Inno Under 25 recognizes some trailblazers in the Capital Region who are just getting started and already making an impact on their company and industry.
This is the second annual Under 25 feature for Albany Inno – the Capital Region’s go-to resource for coverage of startups and innovation. Albany Inno is part of American Inno, a division of the Business Review’s parent company, American City Business Journals. Now more than 40 markets strong, Inno is the most comprehensive network of local innovation intelligence in the United States.
This year, we’re highlighting five young innovators making waves at Capital Region tech companies. They include the founder of an online manga platform that just raised $2.5 million, as well as one of the first employees of a startup that is expanding distribution of a sustainable mushroom-based bacon. '
LawnAdmin
Position: Founder and CEO
Residence: East Greenbush
Industry: Small business software
Age: 22
Mark Bodner came up with the idea for his startup, LawnAdmin, for an assignment in one of his classes at Siena College.
He was having trouble thinking of an idea until he thought of something that would help his own business. He and his brother own a landscaping business, Bodner Brothers Landscaping, and he realized how much more efficient their work could be if they had the ability to take care of administrative tasks in the field – not at a computer desk.
Bodner began putting together a platform called LawnAdmin, an app for small business landscapers with revenues of between $10,000 and $100,000. It’s meant to streamline tasks such as email invoicing, estimate follow-ups, scheduling and equipment maintenance logs.
“We really want to bring some automation and innovation to the industry,” Bodner said in May.
“By creating the internal efficiencies for these businesses, it allows them to have more time, and most likely, these business owners are going to take on additional customers due to having more availability, which then leads to growth in revenue.”
After establishing the software in a smaller market, Bodner plans to expand the service to customers with larger revenues.
Bodner has worked for three and a half years at The Research Foundation for SUNY, most recently in the innovation and entrepreneurship department, where he says he learned a lot about building a startup and has expanded his network.
He spent his senior year at Siena doing a lot of research and engaging with potential customers before graduating in December 2021. Besides continuing to develop the startup, he’s also working on an MBA at Siena.
LawnAdmin won first place in the software and services category of the 2022 New York Business Plan Competition held by the Upstate Capital Association of New York.
VoyceMe
Position: Founder and CEO
Residence: Saratoga Springs
Industry: Digital entertainment
Age: 21
From his Skidmore College dorm room, Dylan Telano has built a platform for digital comics that now has more than 1 million unique monthly users. VoyceMe is an online platform and app where authors can share manga – Japanese-style comics – and webtoons, digital comics that originated in South Korea. It’s an industry that Telano says has exploded over the last few years.
“VoyceMe is more or less this platform that’s centralizing this new space because it hasn’t really been catered to before,” Telano said. “We’re centralizing a spot for them, helping these creators monetize their stories, giving them a platform to actually post their stories.”
VoyceMe recently announced a seed funding round of $2.5 million. The platform has more than 10,000 story chapters published and is continuing to grow. Any creator can post work, but VoyceMe partners with certain authors to help produce work, similar to platforms like YouTube and Netflix. A subscription-based version of the platform is in the works.
VoyceMe is the official English producer of Ultramarine Magmell, a manga that was adapted into a show that’s now on Netflix. It has also signed contracts with anime influencers including Dave Ardito, a German with 8.9 million followers on TikTok.
VoyceMe investors have included Matt Finick, senior vice president for Marvel Studios when it was acquired by Disney in 2009, and Greg Smith of Evolution VC Partners, an early investor in Beyond Meat and JUUL Labs.
Red Sea Ventures led a seed round this year for VoyceMe. Scott Birnbaum, founder of the capital fund, said the decision to invest came from big potential in the comics industry paired with the hard work Telano has put in.
“The combo of Dylan’s passion, his experience in the space, and what he was able to build with pretty much no resources was just really exciting and interesting,” Birnbaum said.
MyForest Foods
Position: Experiential and engagement coordinator
Headquarters: East Greenbush
Industry: Food manufacturing
Age: 24 as of Sept. 15
Alanna Weiss was one of the first employees for startup MyForest Foods, which is in the process of expanding distribution of its mushroom-based bacon following a $40 million fundraise.
Weiss started there in September 2020 shortly after graduating from the University of Delaware, where she studied hospitality business management and entrepreneurship. Her first role mostly focused on helping with production of the bacon alternative. She has had two title changes since then, and now helps spread the word about the MyBacon product through events, working at trade shows, meeting with potential buyers and more.
“There was a point in time where every piece of bacon that would land on a plate was made with my hands,” Weiss said. “Now there’s packs being pumped out all day by a team of six people, and it’s really cool to watch the production scale up.”
Weiss saw the MyBacon product first hit the shelves at the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany. It’s now at five high-end markets in western Massachusetts as well as some restaurants. The product will soon be sold at Northeast farmers markets, including the one in Troy, and Weiss will be involved in the new food truck coming online soon.
Sarah-Marie Cole, chief marketing officer, is her direct supervisor. Cole says Weiss has been a pivotal part of the growth for MyForest, which now has more than 30 employees.
As the startup grows, Weiss says she has been allowed to explore where her skills and interests align and focus her role there. For her, that’s a passion and understanding of what MyForest is trying to do – create a more sustainable food source.
“I think that’s something you learn in the startup environment, is really how to leverage what strength comes naturally to you and then hone in on it, and then really work hard from there.”
Jahnel Group
Position: Recruiter
Headquarters: Schenectady
Industry: Software development
Age: 20
Gio Ortega heard the phrase, “Your network is your net worth,” and that inspired him to introduce himself to the Jahnel Group as a 17-year-old high school student.
Jahnel’s recruiting director, Michael Young, was so impressed with Ortega that he introduced him to the CEO and marked him as a “superstar” candidate, meaning he would reach back out later if a job opened up.
Ortega was hired at the company in March at age 19.
Since then, Ortega introduced a software tool that has increased recruiting efficiency by three times. The recruiting team is working on developing another of Ortega’s ideas: “Choose Your Own Adventure,” which aims to market the flexibility that Jahnel Group employees have to mold their own roles.
“He wants to be creative and continually tries to get better, and that passion for learning is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen,” Young said.
He added that Jahnel employees are encouraged to be creative, but Ortega takes it to another level.
“I’ve got probably 1,000 bad ideas, and then you find some gems,” Ortega said. “They’re always open to experimenting with new ideas, and it’s cool for me because I’ve got a bunch of ideas that kind of just come to me randomly throughout the day.”
Ortega says he usually had Forbes and Inc. articles open during school, and he was always coming up with ways to make money, like selling chips and salsa that his mom made.
He decided against attending college. In talking with mentors and others, he said one message was clear: “If you want to learn business, start a business or be involved in a business and learn different aspects with hands-on experience.”
Ortega experimented with a startup idea during the early days of the pandemic, and he later ran a gutter cleaning business for about a year, working as a business apprentice at Scatterday & Associates in between those projects.
Wolfjaw Studios
Position: Software engineer
Headquarters: Troy
Industry: Video games
Age: 23
Will Clifford started as an associate software engineer at Wolfjaw Studios in early 2021 right after graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Mid-pandemic was a busier time than ever for the video game industry, and Clifford got working on some big projects right away.
“It was really exciting but also super nerve-wracking to immediately start shipping out changes that I had written to hundreds of thousands of players, potentially,” Clifford said.
He and the other developers are currently working with video game studio InnerSloth on the popular online multiplayer game Among Us.
Because people have been connecting with one another through playing online games more than ever, Wolfjaw has had to help clients ensure that their software can handle heavy traffic.
“One of the reasons that I really like working with Wolfjaw, and in this space in general, is that there’s a lot of room for you to find something that’s not working so well or something that people are used to doing a certain way, and then being able to take a potential solution and ... just sort of run with it.”
Hunter Fortuin, director of engineering for Wolfjaw, says that Clifford has been instrumental in that work, so much so that he got a promotion less than a year after starting. Clifford has slowly taken on a team lead role, helping others prioritize tasks.
“We saw a lot of potential in him, and he’s done nothing but surprise us in the best ways possible,” Fortuin said. “For someone that has the years of experience and the resume that he has, you’d be surprised if you were to learn how young he was, just because of the quality of work and kind of the glue work that he does within our team and the teams that we work with.”
