Moving Real Ideas Towards Real Companies
Pre-Seed Workshop is a community event where teams build companies—not the physical structures, but the foundational plans. And it all happens in two and a half days...
The PSW was started in 2004 and is now being held about eight times a year in various Host City locations throughout New York State including Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, Geneva, Albany, and Long Island. With 77+ major participating organizations, it is one of the largest grass-roots initiatives in the state facilitating the growth of entrepreneurship and the creation of start-up companies across the region. More about the PSW-NY Consortium. The program is now expanding nationally.
The PSW rallies highly-skilled community talent and resources around academic researchers with patented inventions. Six to eight teams are created per workshop. The teams are led through a series of structured hands-on sessions where they investigate and transform potentially commercializable technologies into pre-seed stage companies. Teams leave the workshop with a thin commercialization plan for a new start-up.
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High-performance teams at work during a Break-Out Session |
Growing Pool Of Success
As of Nov 2011 we have held:
- 46 Pre-Seed Workshops
- with nearly 2000 Participants
- in which 274 “hi-tech ideas”
have been analyzed - by 274 teams
- to create or strength 130+ high-tech companies
Many of our start-ups have gone on to win local, national, and international business plan competitions. Many have received SBIR funding or secured seed and venture capital. We estimate that our alumni have collectively raised about $70M in follow-on capital and created about 400 jobs, with the potential to create many more.