Technology Incubator to host Open House April

The SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator will host an Open House on Tuesday, April 9, from 4 to 7 p.m. All business, campus and community members are invited to attend this event, which is free and open to the public.

The open house will feature current incubator tenants, employees and interns, including the chance to meet and interact with them personally. Tours of the building will be offered at 4:30 and 5:15 p.m., and Incubator Director Robert Fritzinger will give a brief presentation at 5:50 p.m.

Among the anticipated tenant attendees are (alphabetically):

• AVtick, whose mission is to evolve the social media and networking experience for today's mobile lifestyle. AVtick seeks to bring the sound of audio and voices to its mobile-based social interactions, making personal interactions easier to share and lives happier — an audio- and voice-based social media and networking experience. In March, AVtick launched a RocketHub crowd-funding campaign to raise seed capital to fund the first iteration of its iPhone application, with long-term goals to build out the product and roll it out to other operating systems such as Android and iPad.
• The Center for Sports Skills Measurement and Improvement, a company which helps athletes to improve, parents to stay informed, and coaches to explore information on the nation’s top athletes, all in one place. The company currently has 23 clients in 11 states.
• Dunkirk Bioenergy (DBE), a renewable energy company developing a system that utilizes anaerobic digestion technology to produce renewable energy, heat and soil products from organic waste. DBE is working with several of the area’s food processing companies to create a centralized alternative waste management system that turns their organic waste into energy.
• iKoss Consulting, a certified small, woman-owned consulting firm. It specializes in human resource-related process and organizational transition services, change management, portal/intranet content writing, and project management support. iKoss focuses on Fortune 1000 companies within the food service, hospitality, and retail sectors. It presently has eight employees as well as clients with operations in all 50 states.
• Silicon Wolves Computing Society, an enterprise-, corporate- and academic-ready, high-performance computing solutions company. The research and development company manufactures the most advanced, professional-grade computer workstations, clusters and supercomputing clusters on the market, emphasizing solutions which are “tailor made” for its clients’ needs. This high-tech start-up relocated to the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator from Anaheim, Calif. in the spring of 2012, and has recently begun deploying computing solutions at University of Buffalo’s Virtual Reality Laboratory.
• STASH Sporting Goods, Inc., whose product line includes The LaceLocker®, STASH Z3 Fielding Glove, STASH EPS Glove, QUICK MITT Hitting Gloves, and The Hand★Saver. Its latest product, the LaceLocker®, is a unique storage device designed to give users a sense of shoelace safety, whether they are running, playing a sport or walking. STASH recently signed eight-time NCAA Division II champion and elite distance Hanson Brooks runner Neely Spence Gracey as LaceLocker’s first pro endorser.
• TexTivia, the most recent client to graduate from the incubator — relocating only one block away on Central Avenue into a slightly larger space. TexTivia is an innovative digital and social media marketing agency, and presently has over 100 clients in 12 states. Since graduating from the incubator, the firm has added four employees and over 30 new clients.
• V3 Studios, the incubator’s first student-founded tenant, owned by SUNY Fredonia student Michael Carbone and 2012 graduate Andre Cobham. The video production service provider, which currently has three employees and 11 clients, is finalizing the edit for infoTech Niagara's 2013 BETA Awards.

Other tenants may participate as their schedules allow.

“The incubator is a part of this community, and this event is an excellent opportunity for our neighbors to see and understand, first-hand, what some of our current tenants are working on, and the kinds of challenges they face,” said Fritzinger. “They won’t be able to share every detail of their companies due to regulatory and proprietary issues, but they can share some of the general early successes they’ve achieved — and they of course would be interested in discussing possible new business or collaboration concepts.”

In addition, Fritzinger will review the purpose of the facility, its revenue and funding sources, its progress to date, and its near- and long-term goals.

“It’s very difficult to get all of our tenants in one place at one time due to their heavy travel schedules, but our hope is to have a good sampling so that the community gains a better understanding of what the average day-in-the-life is for them, how their successes are already contributing to the region, and how this initiative ultimately will positively impact the Western New York community,” he added.

The SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator offers entrepreneurs access to a unique facility, business resources and technology expertise, as well as a range of highly qualified academic and business professionals and mentors. The 21,000-square-foot, two-story facility, located at 214 Central Ave. in downtown Dunkirk, is capable of providing support and shared services to as many as 30 start-up companies at a time, thereby increasing the odds of each company’s survival — and the chances for economic growth in Western New York.