February 2020

 We kicked off the year just 10 days into 2020 with a successful HV Entrepreneur Educators Forum on January 10. See highlights from the Forum in the Leaders section below. 

We are looking forward to our next Forum which will bring HV entrepreneurs together on March 19 at SUNY New Paltz. The HV is dispersed geographically so we don’t have the organic creative collisions between entrepreneurs that NYC and other startup communities have. This Forum is the first of many planned creative collisions for HV entrepreneurs. See details in the Entrepreneur section below.

Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs from across the HV are invited to attend our first HV Entrepreneurs Forum on March 19 at SUNY New Paltz. This is a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet each other and to share best practices, insights, and lessons learned. Entrepreneurial mistakes can be costly and can often be avoided by learning from other entrepreneurs.An apt quote from early 20th century economist H.G. Brown, “Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own.”

See the HV Entrepreneurs Forum tentative agenda below:

To register, contact Tony DiMarco at dimarcoa@newpaltz.edu

Investors 

High-growth startups that meet HVSF’s investment criteria are invited to submit information to its screening committee for pitch consideration. Those invited to pitch are often provided advice and assistance to improve their presentation. 

The pitch is made at a regularly monthly HVSF meeting and is followed by a Q&A session. Members then discuss the opportunity and vote whether to move into due diligence (DD). The DD team requests additional information from the startup with a goal of clarifying member’s questions to speed a decision along. When the DD team has concluded its investigation, it makes a recommendation to the full membership who vote whether to make an investment. The process can take 3 months. HVSF is currently in due diligence with the startups below. 

If you are a high-growth startup in the Hudson Valley and would like to discuss funding with HVSF, contact Leon Greene at screening@hvstartupfund.com or by applying via Gust.

• Aspisafe (MD, Founder and CEO, Talal Sharaiha): a medical device company manufacturing innovative feeding tubes and accessories.The near term focus is to solve the problem of aspiration in tube fed patients in all various healthcare settings. Aspiration pneumonia complicates patients' health in many detrimental ways. 
• Lessonbee (Founder and CEO, Reva McPollom): culturally responsive lessons and comprehensive curriculum designed to engage students in building health knowledge and skills through conversational and reflective learning for an awesome (not awkward) health education experience.
• urbanXtracts (Founder and CEO, Eran Sherin): with a dual license to grow and process in the State of New York, urbanXtracts offers a fully integrated seed-to-market supply chain. In today’s evolving hemp space, we have a goal to empower farmers, processors, manufacturers and developers through our one of a kind ecosystem.
• United Aircraft Technologies (Founders: Evaguel Rhysing, Daryian Rhysing): creating the future of wire maintenance through the use of a network of sensors, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, housed in the world's first snap-fit interconnecting, hardware free electrical clamp for aircraft wiring.
• Our.News (Founder and CEO, Richard Zack): pushing back on misinformation, disinformation, clickbait, junk news, internet hoaxes and conspiracy theories through Nutrition Labels attached to every news story, on any topic, from any source. Making it easier for anyone to fact check by providing full transparency.
• ViaHero (Founder and CEO, Greg Buzulencia): where locals plan your trip. Remember that amazing recommendation from your taxi driver? Imagine having that insight for every part of your trip.

Leaders

Entrepreneur Educators Forum, hosted by the HV Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz on January 10th. 

In a first of kind Forum, entrepreneur educators came together from 15 colleges across the Hudson Valley to collaborate on the MHV Regional Business Competition and best practices to enhance the student entrepreneur experience through ideation, curriculum, post-classroom support, and community engagement. 

The 15 colleges included: Bard College, Berkeley College, Culinary Institute of America, Iona College, Manhattanville College, Marist College, Mercy College, SUNY Dutchess, SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Orange, SUNY Rockland, SUNY Ulster, SUNY Westchester, The College of Westchester, and Touro College (NY Medical School, Valhalla).

Pictured above is a panel discussion of six colleges with significant participation in the regional competition over the past seven years. Marist College has hosted the competition since its inaugural year in 2013. Seated left to right to left are entrepreneur educators:

• Scott Willmen, SUNY Dutchess
• Cameron Rabe, Culinary Institute
• Don Urmston, SUNY Orange
• Christoper Algozzine, Marist College, School of Computer Science
• Pat Phelan, SUNY Ulster
• Tony DiMarco, SUNY New Paltz, School of Business
• Johnny LeHane, SUNY New Paltz, School of Business (Panel Moderator)

In addition to the panel, there were four Roundtable Discussions that enabled deeper collaboration among the educators

• Ideation: promoting creative ideation among students in entrepreneurship classes (Facilitator: Chris Napolitano, SUNY New Paltz)
• Curriculum: developing innovative curriculum for entrepreneurship classes (Facilitator: Mike Caslin, SUNY New Paltz)
• Student Entrepreneur Support: moving students from classroom to Incubator/Accelerator/Innovation Center: ideas, insights and practices (Facilitator: Christoph Winkler, Iona)
• Community Engagement: engaging the business community in your entrepreneurship classes (Facilitator: Johnny LeHane, SUNY New Paltz)

Consensus at the Entrepreneur Educators Forum was to continue to come together as a community to help each other succeed in our common goal of educating the next generation of HV entrepreneurs.

For more information, contact Tony DiMarco at dimarcoa@newpaltz.edu

Service Providers

Andigo is a web development and digital marketing agency based in Manhattan and the mid-Hudson Valley. They provide digital marketing strategy along with web development, content marketing, SEO, and analytics to startups and established businesses, particularly mission-driven businesses. They recently revised and relaunched the Hudson Valley Startup Fund’s website. Digital Strategist Andrew Schulkind provides marketing support to HVSF in his role as co-manager. 

For website development, Andigo’s discovery process focuses on defining marketing and business goals and matching the digital tools needed to achieve them. The documents produced not only speed development, but ensure that sales and marketing efforts are integrated across digital and traditional marketing channels. 

These include a strategy brief, site map, page wireframes, functional and technical specification, content map and editorial calendar, and visual design brief. 

• Website design and development using a variety of CMS platforms
• Content strategy and development — copy, visuals, video
• Keyword research and SEO
• Analytics consulting
• PPC advertising
• Accessibility compliance
• Website hardening, security monitoring, and maintenance
• Email marketing campaigns

Examples of Andigo’s work can be found in the Work section of their website. Resources and digital marketing tips are available via LinkedIn and Twitter.

For more information, contact Andrew Schulkind at 212-727-8445 or through Andigo’s website.

Before Silicon Valley, The HV

By Donald J. Delaney

The Smith Brothers (cough drops) - Inventors of a Marketing Category

0 to $100 Million

How did the Smith Brothers, two Scottish immigrants, and sweet shop owners, invent and create a $100 million consumer products category?

Inventing and owning a ‘category’ is a big deal. For many a startup entrepreneur, branding a ‘category’ is the holy grail. It is easy to assume category-brands like Coke, Colgate and Xerox were always business memes and category leaders. Not so. Before marketing became modern-day marketing, in 1847, the Smith Brothers were busy creating a market category (cough drops), pioneering branding, and protecting their IP (intellectual property).

The Smith Brothers would have scratched their beards hearing the word entrepreneur in 1847, as the term was not put into use until 1852. Nonetheless, William and Andrew Smith spotted an opportunity and decided to pursue it regardless of their resources, confident to find a way to make it happen.

Like footsteps in the snow, business success leaves tracks. See step 1 to 10 below:

1. The Smith Brothers’ entrepreneurial journey started with a clear and compelling intention: build a better life, live the American dream.
2. Locate in a bustling business environment: the Hudson Valley was growing, and the center of the action was Market and Main Street, in Poughkeepsie.
3. Create an attention-grabbing offering: ice cream, sweets or family friendly hot food. 
4. Attract luck: be open, curious and welcome opportunity. Sly Hawkins walked into Smith Brothers shop with a problem. He needed a candy designed for his cough and sore throat formula.
5. Move quickly: the Smith Brothers purchased Mr. Hawkins’s formula.
6. Create a vision, plan, structure, and launch quickly.
7. Hustle in a smart, strategic way: the ‘brothers’ promoted their business launch using a mix of old and new marketing methods: gift envelopes of ‘cough candies’ given to children accompanied by an adult in the restaurant, ‘hawking’ sales on Main and Market street, advertising in the Poughkeepsie Eagle.
8. Attract luck again: schools and churches allowed children to bring in cough candies. Smith Brothers Cough Drop went viral, demand grew and grew.
9. Brand and Protect: success attracts competition. The bearded Smith Brothers invented the pocket, purse size cough drop box with distinctive graphics featuring ‘Trade and Mark’, to counter drug store competition. The clever brothers, after discovering a patent was not possible, trademarked the IP (intellectual property).
10. Scale: at its peak in the mid-1940 Smith Brothers was making one million packages of cough drops a day. That was sixty tons of cough drop produced daily!

Two canny Scots created the following:

Smith Brothers Factory on Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie,

And...

• A $100 million-dollar consumer product category
• A 117-year-old family-owned and managed business
• Three generations of owner-managers
• An iconic brand
• Branding, intellectual property protection, packaging and graphics
• One of the oldest trademarks
• Thousands of good jobs
• Generous community builders and philanthropists, including Vassar College funders

This Before the Silicon Valley, the Hudson Valley blog offers a 400-year narrative journey honoring the Icons of entrepreneurship and their impact on invention, innovation, and commercialization in the Hudson Valley. 

Contact welcome: Donald J. Delaney, HV Entrepreneurship Historian & Blog Writer for the HV Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz. You can reach Don at don@dondelaney.com

© Donald J. Delaney 2019

Events

February (New Rochelle, Rhinebeck) - Applications are now open for Accel7’s Winter Entrepreneur Bootcamp, starting the first week in February. Sessions held in the evening. 

February 10 (Kings Court Brewing, Poughkeepsie): HV Womxn in Business monthly meeting, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

March 9 (Grit Works, Newburgh): HV Womxn in Business monthly meeting, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Classes start on March 11 (Newburgh): Spanish 60 Hour Entrepreneurial Training Program, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm at SUNY Orange

March (New Rochelle, Rhinebeck) - Applications are now open for Accel7’s Spring Accelerator Cohort, a part-time, 3-month program for startup founders and teams wishing to advance your business.

March 19 (New Paltz): HV Entrepreneurs Forum hosted by the Hudson Valley Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz. An opportunity for HV entrepreneurs to learn from each other. To register, contact Tony DiMarco, dimarcoa@newpaltz.edu

March 23 (Poughkeepsie): 4 Goals 4 LinkedIn 4 Business, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm at Think Dutchess

April 13 (Kingston): HV Womxn in Business monthly meeting, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

April 20 (New Windsor): POS- The Fast Track to Growth, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm at The Accelerator

Comments? Email Tony DiMarco at dimarcoa@newpaltz.edu