A growing list of professionals in Buffalo work for startups that are based elsewhere in the state.
From TCGplayer to MadGlory PUBG to Cloudcheckr and others, the strands between startup economies from Buffalo to Albany have grown stronger in recent years.
Add James Licata of Hidden Level to the list.
The fast-growing firm is based in Syracuse and is commercializing a system that monitors public air space, an issue of growing concern as drones become popular consumer-delivery mechanisms. Backed by Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm, Hidden Level is now launching its service in various major metropolitan communities where drones are expected to cloud public airways.
In the meantime, Hidden Level’s Buffalo-based vice president of strategy and partnerships is open to hiring more team members in Buffalo.
Licata spoke with Business First spoke about his own journey, Hidden Level and the future.
Being a top leader at a Syracuse-based startup but working in Buffalo sounds like a circuitous story.
I grew up in Tonawanda and went to school at Clarkson University. I am a software engineer by trade and I cut my teeth in the defense company working for a great company (SRC Inc.) in Syracuse, where I worked on military radar and the integration of other detection systems such as counter rocket, mortar and artillery. We were also looking at ways to use that same tech for drone detection.
So Hidden Level was founded by people who were already technical experts in the field.
The drone space is changing at a rapid, rapid pace. It includes everything from the security needs of an airport to the security needs of Amazon.
Our magic is behind our hardware solution – we changed the game on the business side of it. We own and operate a network of sensors that provide low altitude airspace monitoring for airport security, public venues and other spaces.
How would you characterize Hidden Level in the startup lifespan?
I would classify us as just hitting our stride. We are VC backed with money out of the West Coast and all over really, and obviously over the past few years, people are opening their eyes to innovation that can happen outside of the beaten path.
Setting up the infrastructure in our communities takes a lot of time and we are dependent on building relationships with the communities and areas we are launching service in. We have to make sure we have the infrastructure to support it.
But we have activities on the west and east coast and we have a lot of great announcements coming out about what we’re doing and where our service is going to be deployed.
We have 21 employees right now with eight or nine job openings, and we plan to add more throughout the rest of the year.
You came back and worked at Moog for a year until joining Hidden Level in 2019. Why are you based in Buffalo?
As a Buffalo native, I was fortunate with my last company (before Moog) that remote working was a thing they allowed me to do, and I’ve been super productive ever since. I love being in Buffalo – there is a lot of talent to be had and a lot of professions who are like me. I am hoping to add some staff here, especially on the business and sales side, to help support our headquarters in Syracuse.
How did a software guy (Licata has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer engineering at Clarkson) end up in such a business role?
It’s an attitude we have as a company where you have a lot of folks who are very technically oriented. I have to put my best face. The way I have always attacked doing business, including the position I’m in now, is that I enjoy having honest conversations with the customer and translating those technical details to business and action plans that make sense. We want to make sure we deeply understand our customers’ pressing issues so that we can point our engineering team in the right direction.
