Last week I had the honor to travel to the Tech Garden in Syracuse for their 10th Anniversary.
It is Central NY's place for Entrepreneurs, Mentors, Investors and Service Providers, ran by some really awesome, forward thinking people! For the day, they provided lunch from local food trucks, and lots of time to pitch ideas, along with tons of great networking and even a walking tour of Downtown Syracuse! After all that they had over 30 tables of local startups, companies and services along with some awesome food and drinks!
I say the honor, as I was asked to tag along with the WNY Innovation hot spot an innovative, incubator designed to help students with startup ideas, to accelerate the idea into something more! I will have more on the WNY Innovation Hotspot in the next week or so.
So first off the Tech Garden could not have picked a better day to do this, sunny and warm and a nice breeze all day. For an outdoor venue it was really nice!
I travelled with a few members from one team and the manager of the WNY Innovation Hot Spot Thomas Murdock.
When we arrived we were greeted nicely and we grabbed some food from the food trucks and we headed right into the Tech Garden's theater. We were treated to 8 pitches from local folks with some pretty unique ideas. Some of the ideas were cool and others very interesting. They had mentors from Launch NY and a prize of $1000 to the best idea! 5 minutes to pitch and 5 minutes of Q&A from the judges. I tweeted a lot during the pitches so if you want to know who was pitching and who won jump on Twitter and search the Hashtag - #TTG10
When we arrived we were greeted nicely and we grabbed some food from the food trucks and we headed right into the Tech Garden's theater. We were treated to 8 pitches from local folks with some pretty unique ideas. Some of the ideas were cool and others very interesting. They had mentors from Launch NY and a prize of $1000 to the best idea! 5 minutes to pitch and 5 minutes of Q&A from the judges. I tweeted a lot during the pitches so if you want to know who was pitching and who won jump on Twitter and search the Hashtag - #TTG10
After the pitches were done the judges had to go and judge so I jumped on the tour, that showed some really cool spaces in downtown Syracuse.
This hotel is modeled after the Statler Hotel in Buffalo, it looks like it!
Some great office space for $275 per month with internet connections included!
My favorite place was the CoWork Space just up the street from the Tech Garden. Just check out the place! It even came with a clone of Buffalo D!G's Jessica Edwards our very own CoWork Queen!
From there we headed over to State Tower to meet a gaming company TCGPlayer and we saw their entire operation.
Here is Thomas Murdock the Manager of the WNY Innovation Hotspot! This guy knew more about Syracuse then some of the guides! Thanks Thomas!
Then it was on to the party and hanging out in the plaza! Great food, networking and everyone had a great time!
Here is our group from Buffalo and we were lucky to be asked to be a part of this special day! Special Thanks to Seth Mulligan and Tony Kershaw of the Tech Garden for hosting this amazing event!
