In some places, it can be really hard for an entrepreneur to get a meeting.
Buffalo’s startup economy, however, is marked by access – to mentors, business partners and potential investors.
That supportive environment that is at the root of many success stories in Buffalo’s catalog of surging startups.
It was one of the lessons that came out of Buffalo Inno’s inaugural event, “Ecosystem 101: An overview of Buffalo’s tech and startup communities.”
“We’ve been provided opportunities with (Ciminelli Real Estate Corp. and Savarino Cos.) that we probably wouldn’t have had in other locations,” said Ofo Ezeugwu, founder and CEO of WhoseYourLandlord, which came to Buffalo last year after winning an award in the 43North business competition. “It allowed us to get our software off the ground, to get tested and get feedback from genuinely good people, and that’s been everything for our business.”
The event also included pitches from the founders of braidbabes, Kyklo and Circuit Clinical, and a panel discussion with Dan Magnuszewski, co-founder and CTO of ACV Auctions; Eric Reich, 43North board chair; Christina Orsi, University at Buffalo associate vice president for economic development; and Rohit Gupta, the managing partner of Future Communities Capital.
Much of the discussion centered around how much progress has been made since the days when Reich founded Campus Labs in 2001 and Magnuszewski started ACV Auctions in 2014.
ACV Auctions become Buffalo’s first software company with a private valuation exceeding $1 billion and recently went public on the NASDAQ stock.
It’s the kind of event that will have an impact in the community for a generation, Reich said.
“The most important part of ACV is there are now hundreds of people who know how to do a startup, hundreds of people who could never imagine working in any other environment,” he said. “I think there will be 10, 15, 20 people who leave ACV and start other companies, and that’s what we need to create a sustainable startup ecosystem.”
Gupta’s Bay Area fund has invested in two Buffalo-based startup recently, HELIXintel and Ognomy. He said the premise of looking outside Silicon Valley was that if it was importing so much talent, it must be coming from somewhere.
As an outside investor, he was particularly impressed by the integration of the major political and institutional player.s
“You have this alignment across different spheres and everyone is bought into this idea of growing Buffalo’s startup economy,” he said. “For us that is critical in saying, ’That’s how we build something here.”
After a handful of big success stories and waves of support from governments, foundations and private business groups, they said, this is now a place where a startup founder can find other people who have lived their journey.
“We joke about it all the time, that if there’s somebody in Western New York to help a startup make it through the bottleneck, we’ve been helped by that organization,” said Dr. Irfan Khan, CEO of Circuit Clinical. “I think that’s the definition of a great ecosystem, and we’ve benefitted from all of it.”
Watch the discussion below:
