Join us November 14 at 4 p.m. for a virtual discussion with Syracuse University alum Michael Steinmetz CPA about what startups need to know to wrap up their financial year and plan for the next one. The Zoom event is open only to Syracuse University students. What’s deductible and what isn’t?  How can you minimize tax liability?  What financial records you should be keeping?  What should you be reporting?  If you hired contractors, what forms do you owe them?  How do you handle competition prize winnings as taxable income? How should you be setting up your basic bookkeeping and accounting for the coming year?  What do you need to know about hiring 1099 employees?  If you’re hiring, what do you need to know about payroll taxes?  What quarterly reports should you be filing? What’s some good general advice on setting up your P&L, balance sheet and understanding the different models of accounting – cash basis or accrual basis.

Steinmetz is a CPA and trusted advisor within Citrin Cooperman’s business advisory department with over eight years of experience providing accounting and tax services to privately held companies. He has a specialized focus in servicing technology and early-stage start-up clients, however, his client base spans across a broad range of industries including manufacturing & distribution, hospitality, professional services and construction.

He takes a strategic approach to servicing his clients by specializing in profitability and growth. He works closely with his clients to improve efficiencies and productivity by analyzing their business operations and providing insight on budgeting, operations, and internal controls.

Steinmetz prides himself on not only grasping concepts and procedures, but being able to offer innovative solutions and insightful advice and to communicate these in a thoughtful and coherent manner.

Before joining Citrin Cooperman, he worked at Ernst & Young in Wealth and Asset Management Assurance. There, he provided services to several hedge funds, private equity funds and mutual funds, assisting them with compliance and operational efficiency.

He is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the AICPA. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Syracuse University from the Whitman School of Management and earned his M.B.A. from Binghamton University.

To register and receive the Zoom link, please e-mail LaunchPad@syr.edu

One of the largest cohorts ever – 33 student teams – will compete November 11 for $15,000 in prizes in this year’s Syracuse LaunchPad’s Impact Prize. The event, designed to catalyze social impact entrepreneurship, will be held in Bird Library from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and will feature student startups from across all majors who applied to compete. It is open to members of the campus community who want to attend and observe students presenting business models for products, projects, services, or technologies that are practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions to societal problems anywhere around the globe. Students from 134 countries are part of the LaunchPad.

The event opens with a 2 p.m. welcome by David Seaman, Dean of Syracuse University Libraries in Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Room 114, Bird Library. Following remarks, students will pitch in this tentative order:

Room One – Bird 004
Time	Team Captain	Team Name
2:20	Ben Ford	Fundwurx
2:30	Zirui Wang	Public Opinion
2:40	Payton Dunn	Absurdist
2:50	Adya Parida and Oliver Raycroft	Scale Sense
3:00	Bowen MacLennan	UVT
3:10	Siraj Dahal	Private Route Aggregator
3:20	Nicolas Courbage	Receipts
3:30	Jeremy Shinder	Jere Bear Films
Room Two – Bird 606
2:20	Jared Anderson	The Emergency Preparedness Project
2:30	Ud Joseph	Mentorship for Young Immigrants
2:40	Cem Taviloglu	Vanir Meads
2:50	Sajjad Al-Hashami	Eye-N
3:00	Manya Gadhok (virtual)	Period.
3:10	Dylan Palmer and Alan Jos	Citron Solutions
3:20	Mauricio Luna	Luna College Consulting
3:30	Noah Mechnig-Giordano	Happy Loose Leaf Tea
Room Three – Bird 608
Time	Presenter Name	Team Name
2:20	Lexi Cianfarani	ClubMATCH
2:30	Ryan Peters	Polititag
2:40	Sai Krishna Bolla	TelMeNot
2:50	Frank Marin	Marhold Space Systems
3:00	Katy Arons	Continual
3:10	Natasha Abrol	Art X Ecology
3:20	Claire Chevalier	CMC
3:30	Frederick Pollard	Oasis
3:40	Motolani Oladitan	E-vend
Room Four – Bird 120
2:20	Emma Lueders	Moody Mag
2:30	Eric Hong and Franky Zhang	Scout
2:40	Brandon Henry	Beyond the Box
2:50	Drew Bartelstein	Purescan
3:00	Cherry Kim	Conformabelt
3:10	Ian Storrs	ConCurrent
3:20	Anand Benegal	Spatika: 4D News
3:30	Ethan Tyo	The AlterNative Project
Final Round – Bird 004
4:00	Winner of Room One
4:05	Winner of Room One
4:10	Winner of Room Two
4:15	Winner of Room Two
4:20	Winner of Room Three
4:25	Winner of Room Three
4:30	Winner of Room Four
4:35	Winner of Room Four

Judges will announce the winners at 5 p.m. during a closing reception at the LaunchPad.

Examples of impact ventures include business models or projects around:

• Agriculture
• Arts and culture
• Community revitalization
• Disability and accessibility
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Employment and training
• Energy and climate change
• Environmental sustainability
• Food access and nutrition
• Health and mental health
• Historic preservation
• Literacy and education
• Poverty
• Sustainability
• Transportation and mobility
• Underserved populations
• Youth leadership and empowerment
• Other public policy challenges

This year’s competition is supported through a $15,000 gift from SU Libraries Advisory Board Member Carl Armani and his wife Marcy, in honor of Linda Dickerson-Hartsock, retiring LaunchPad executive director, who created the Impact Prize. This is the sixth annual competition, designed to help see the greater good and make a difference in the lives of people around them. Social impact is a mission that Linda personally and professionally championed through her career and at the LaunchPad.

The Impact Prize is also a gateway to spring competitions like the ACC InVenture Prize, RvD iPrize, Hunter Brooks Watson Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award and the Panasci Business Plan Competition.

The Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse and Arrow Electronics are excited to offer the IoT, Drone, and Robotics Symposium on Thursday, November 17^. You are invited to join The Tech Garden, 235 Harrison Street. where you can view presentations from leading industry manufacturers including Arrow, AVX, Bourns, Molex, Infineon, Intel, NXP, and Qualcomm. Lunch will be provided and attendees can register to win $1000 worth of door prizes. Register here by e-mail.

CryptoCuse is hosting its first official NFT Design Competition in collaboration with Newhouse and VPA. No prior knowledge of cryptocurrency or NFTs is required and anyone can submit an original work of art. Submitted artwork will be judged for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place with the chance to win a prize. The artwork will then be minted as two NFTs — one for the artist to keep and another that will be distributed across the Orange community to students, athletes, alumni, and faculty. This will create community-wide appreciation and provide benefits to both the artist and the NFT holder.

The theme of the competition is “What does it mean to be a Syracuse student?” Submission deadline is Friday December 2. Please submit your artwork to this Google form. Please title your artwork and give a description of it which will be displayed alongside your artwork as an NFT.

Top three artists will receive rewards that include a high quality JBL Flip 6 portable speaker, gift cards and disposable camera.

For NFT Holders, benefits include perks from collaborations with student organizations and the chance to be part of original CryptoCuse community with priority access to future events and collections.

For every piece of art submitted, one NFT will be minted for the artist and one minted to be distributed to the community. NFTs will be distributed after the submission deadline. After the deadline, a form will open to claim a chance at winning an NFT. There will be fair distribution across students, faculty, and alumni.

Submission Format

• File type: PNG, JPG, GIF
• Size: Square dimensions, under 10 MB
• Art Type: Any form including graphic design, photography, physical art rendered into digital art, etc.

Judgement Criteria

• Vision: Storytelling -> How can you visually communicate what it means to be a Syracuse Student?
• Creativity: Unique -> What makes your piece stand out?
• Greater Contribution: Legacy -> How can your piece inspire others?

Competition Requirements

• No prior experience in cryptocurrency or NFTs is needed.
• Anyone can submit a digital piece of art.
• Submitted digital artwork needs to be original. Can be previously created and or submitted to other competitions if it adheres to the theme.
• Abides to SU Trademark Guidelines

Definitions

• NFT: (Non-fungible token), a unique digital asset on a blockchain. Can represent many different assets including art. NFTs represent ownership of this asset.​
• Mint: the action of publishing a unique digital asset, NFT, to a blockchain. This digital asset can then be transferred between different users or sold on a marketplace.

About CryptoCuse:

CryptoCuse serves to provide Syracuse University students with education in cryptocurrency, DeFi, and blockchain. CryptoCuse gives students the ability to develop their cryptocurrency portfolios while learning how to utilize blockchain as a powerful tool.

The club has four pillars:

• Discussion: The club engages in weekly discussions about crypto news and member investments.
• Education: CryptoCuse provides its members with a lecture-style and hands-on education in cryptocurrency, DeFi, and blockchain. 
• Blockchain Tech Startups: CryptoCuse works closely with the Blackstone LaunchPad to be a center for the creation and development of blockchain startups. We turn ideas into real business. 
• Workshops & Events: CryptoCuse puts on a series of events and workshops throughout the academic year. We often put on events with our big-brother organization WiTec.

CryptoCuse is a Registered Student Organization (RSO) housed at the Blackstone LaunchPad. Meetings are each Monday in the Blackstone LaunchPad, first floor, Bird Library at 7 p.m.

The club is open to all students and welcomes new members. Join here.

Former LaunchPad Program Managers Nick Barba ’20 and Sam Hollander ’21 were featured speakers as they joined thousands of collegiate entrepreneurs last week as part of the annual Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEOORG) Global Conference. During the Chicago event, CEO members, partners, investors, and business mentors assembled in person around the theme “Frame your Future.” 

Students participated in a: $20,000 pitch competition, a $10,000 Venture Valley E-Sports Tournament, and a Startup Wars entrepreneurship simulation challenge. Additionally, they heard from 65 entrepreneurs and 10 main stage founders, and networked with peers and business investors.

Barba, who is now program manager for Future Founders, based in Chicago, was part of a special CEO pop-up of their innovative Startup Bootcamp, an idea-stage accelerator that covers topics ranging from customer discovery to pitching. The Startup Bootcamp combines hands-on learning with topical lectures that will help focus on taking action.

Hollander was part of a panel of outstanding student and young alumni entrepreneurs who chatted with Courtney Gras, Courtney Gras, CTO Fellowship Community Lead with AWS Startups, who was previously director of ecosystem development for Techstars, working with the Blackstone LaunchPad network. They talked about how to infuse entrepreneurship into the fabric of universities globally by sharing their ideas and expertise with a high energy audience of aspiring collegiate entrepreneurs.

Farm to Flame Energy Inc., co-founded by Syracuse University alum Will McKnight and Kwaku Jyamfi, won the $150,000 grand prize and Envision Biopolymers, founded by SUNY ESF post graduate Christopher Thomas, won $50,000 in the FuzeHub 2022 Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund Commercialization Competition.

The competition was held October 25-26 at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center as part of the NYS Innovation Summit. Nine entrepreneurs from across New York State pitched their ideas before a live audience and a panel of four expert judges from the economic development community.

The annual two-day Innovation Summit was held in Buffalo, NY, and included keynote speakers, an executive roundtable, exhibits, breakout sessions on economic development trends and disruptive technologies, and tours of local Centers of Excellence and a new Incubator. Over 500 people and 100 exhibitors were in attendance. During the Commercialization Competition, which is the 4^th Track in the Summit breakout sessions, twelve companies demonstrated the commercialization potential of their product or technology while competing against each other for the opportunity to win an award that will lead them closer to market.

“We are very excited to add these companies to our awardee portfolio. Many previous awardees have achieved significant, sustainable growth, and some have even received national recognition,” said Elena Garuc, Executive Director of FuzeHub, “We believe that this year’s winners are in a position to do just as well, if not better, and we are proud to support them in their journey.”

Josh Aviv ’15 G’17, founder of SparkCharge, was a previous FuzeHub winner, also working with the Syracuse LaunchPad and the Syracuse Center of Excellence (Syracuse CoE). He is now scaling the company nationally.

Both Farm to Flame and Envision Biopolymers worked with the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Syracuse CoE to develop and incubate their ideas.

Farm to Flame Energy Inc. (Syracuse)

Farm to Flame Energy repurposed a Steam Turbine to generate electricity through a smokeless-odorless and portable biomass electricity generation process. They use pulverized feed stocks as biomass to achieve a thermal efficiency of 98%, against the traditional biomass thermal efficiency of 78%.

The venture was founded in 2018 by Will McKnight and Kwaku Jyamfi to commercialize a unique combustion process that was patented by Will’s grandfather and uncle. This process allows several agricultural wastes to burn in a smokeless and odorless fashion. Stefano Alva, Kwaku’s colleague from Carnegie Mellon University, came on the team as CFO in 2020. Through funding from Carnegie Mellon University, Syracuse University, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, FTF commercialized their proprietary biomass electricity generators and home heating products. It also recently won a competitive $100,000 EPA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant and a CSIT Award of nearly $750,000 through its clean tech seed grant program.

The company previously won very early-stage innovation funding through competitive programs through the LaunchPad and the Syracuse CoE.

Envision Biopolymers LLC (Syracuse)

Envision will provide a waste-to-bioplastic platform technology for chemical suppliers to the pulp and paper-based food packaging industry. This not only answers their customers’ demands for more sustainable packaging solutions, but also an impending critical need to replace soon-to-be outlawed workhouse chemistries (PFAS) that they have been using.

The Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund, consisting of over $1 million annually, supports a set of activities designed to spur technology development and commercialization across New York State. FuzeHub is administering this fund as part of its role as the Empire State Development designated statewide MEP center. For more information, visit Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund.

About Jeff Lawrence:  During his more than 20 years at the Center for Economic Growth, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) affiliate in the Capital Region where he served as executive vice president, and MEP Center Director, Jeff Lawrence directed programs of direct assistance to manufacturers and technology companies to increase their competitiveness. He is remembered for being an invaluable and generous mentor to many in the area’s business community and a tireless advocate for manufacturing innovation throughout New York. Jeff was an active mentor to Syracuse University student startups and a valued member of our regional innovation ecosystem here in Central New York.

About FuzeHub:  FuzeHub is a not-for-profit organization that connects New York’s small and mid-sized manufacturing companies to the resources, programs, and expertise they need for technology commercialization, innovation, and business growth.  FuzeHub is the statewide New York Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program (MEP) center, supported by Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology & Innovation. For more information on FuzeHub, visit FuzeHub.

The Blackstone LaunchPad, in collaboration with the Native Student Program in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, will host SU alum Terry Jones ’16 (VPA), Haudenosaunee filmmaker and creative entrepreneur, to screen his most recent short film, “Savage/Future” and share his creative process and journey. The event, from 4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. on November 9 in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Room 114, Bird Library, is open to all.

Terry, Seneca Wolf Clan, is the founder of TornJersey Media and has a passion for sharing his Haudenosaunee history and culture through his film and video works, gaming, VR projects and acting. He strives to find a balance between entertaining and educating his audiences.

He graduated from Syracuse’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in film in 2016 and he is currently pursuing an MFA in film at York University in Toronto.

The event, in celebration of Native Heritage Month, is being curated and organized by Ethan Tyo ’17 (iSchool) G ’22 (Falk) who is this year’s Blackstone LaunchPad’s Todd B. Rubin Diversity and Inclusion Scholar at SU Libraries. It is part of an initiative to expand opportunities and engagements with student entrepreneurs and the broader university community. Ethan, Mohawk Wolf Clan, has been working with the Native Student Program on a series of events incorporating Haudenosaunee knowledge and foodways into academic programming through collaborative experiential events.

Ethan grew up on the Mohawk reservation of Akwesasne, and as a Syracuse student, came to re-appreciate the rich and long-established cultural traditions of the Mohawk people to plan, harvest, and prepare their food from the earth. As an undergraduate he published his first cookbook, building on his interests in food and lifestyle have been with him for a long time.

That led to Ethan re-engaging with his heritage, creating a traditional Three Sisters Garden installation at Pete’s Giving Garden,as a collaboration between Hendricks and Sustainability Management.

Pete’s Giving Garden returned Onondaga seeds to ancestral land for the first time in SU’s history, and was also Ethan’s culmination of the graduate practicum for his food studies degree. He recognized an opportunity to grow food not only in a sustainable manner, but in a way that honors the traditions and culture of the Onondaga Nation, firekeepers of the Haudenosaunee, the Indigenous people on whose ancestral lands Syracuse University now stands. “The ‘three sisters’–corn, beans, and squash—are foundational foods that gave rise to the strength and resilience of the Haudenosaunee people.

This led him to curating this event with Terry which will also feature traditional food and drink paired with two short films on November 9 – SAVAGE FUTURE and the moving documentary, Soup for My Brother.

Terry’s films have screened worldwide and have won several festival awards including “Soup for My Brother” which earned best documentary at the 2016 Liverpool International Film Festival in the United Kingdom. In 2020, he completed the Open Immersion II – Creative Doc VR Lab which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and in partnership with the Canadian Film Centre and imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, supported by the Ford Foundation. In 2021, he was part of a gaming team that was awarded BEST CONCEPT at imagineNATIVE’s Land Jam+, a game jam made for and by Indigenous creatives where participants from different disciplines work in collaborative teams to create video games and interactive media from scratch.

During the summer of 2022, Terry made his stage debut as an actor in Tuscarora playwright Vicki Ramirez’ stage play Pure Native in San Francisco. The play is being produced by AlterTheater which is based in the city San Rafael, CA. Most recently, he was the curator and host of the Haudenosaunee Micro-Short Film Program, which screened at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York in September. The program featured 14 micro-short films by Haudenosaunee filmmakers.

Terry is a true filmmaker, educator, and storyteller empowering future Indigenous creative entrepreneurs by leading with his values, community, and culture.

Please join us in celebrating Native American Heritage Month and taking a journey with an awarding winning VPA alum who produces poetic and poignant short-form stories that look at Indigenous life in a modern world.

Story by Ethan Tyo and LaunchPad staff; photos supplied.

Bookmark November 16 for “Blackstone Table Talks” hosted by the Syracuse University Blackstone LaunchPad aim to amplify and empower student entrepreneurs facing additional hurdles. The format is intimate and social conversations. Register here

Make a latte, coffee, or tea in the LaunchPad, or bring your favorite beverage, and join us on Wednesday, November 16 at 7 p.m. in Bird Library to wind down, refuel and connect with other entrepreneurs who share a similar path. The hour will be filled with inspiring discussions on:

• Creating your own path
• Finding Support and Community
• Startup Resources at the LaunchPad

Blackstone Table Talks is a new series that will be covering a wide variety of topics once per month. LaunchPad Program Manager Indaria Jones and LaunchPad Todd B. Rubin Diversity and Inclusion Scholar Andrew Kim are curating them. Register here

Four Syracuse University student startups and one alum team have gone through Techstars accelerators to build impressive success stories.  Could you be next?  If you are a disciplined and driven startup, chat with the Syracuse LaunchPad about Techstars and explore accelerators now accepting applications.

Techstars accelerators have one goal: To help entrepreneurs succeed. During the immersive three-month accelerator programs, Techstars surrounds companies with the best mentors and an unrivaled network investors, corporate partners and alumni founders. It provides early stage startups with:

• Access to financial, human, and intellectual capital to fuel the success of their business 
• Lifetime access to the Techstars worldwide network
• Access to over $400k of cash equivalent hosting, accounting, and legal support—plus other perks worth more than $5M
• Demo Day exposure and investor connections. Historically, on average, Techstars companies go on to raise more than $2M of outside capital after the program

Techstars is a proven model that’s helped build thousands of successful companies, all over the world. 

Interested in joining a three-month accelerator to gain funding, mentorship, and access to the Techstars network for life?  Applications open six times a year, and stay open typically for 12 weeks.  The next round is now opening.

After applications close, Techstars will review applications for about seven weeks, and spend time getting to know even more about your team, market, progress and idea. The goal is to notify the final group of companies being accepted within eight weeks from the application closing date.

Many programs are now running virtually, some are hybrid and others are in person.

Check out Techstars accelerators accepting applications. 

Learn more about Techstars here.

Before you apply, be sure to chat with the LaunchPad team in Bird Library for advice on what makes for a successful Techstars candidate and for assistance with an application.

Syracuse student students who have gone through a Techstars program include:

• Josh Aviv, Techstars Boston
• AJ Damiano and Michael Paris, Techstars Atlanta
• Kelsey Davis and Brendan O’Keeffe, Techstars LA
• Shawn Gaetano, Techstars LA Music

Syracuse alum Sandra Appiah Babu-Boateng recently completed Techstars Boston

Four Syracuse LaunchPad teams have moved on to the national round of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation’s IDEAS Competition, along with top winners from 50+ Blackstone LaunchPad campuses. Four national winners will each receive $10,000 for the best ideas across the network in the categories of social and climate impact, health and life sciences, consumer products services, and general.

Syracuse University winners who moved on to the national round each received $1,000 in the campus qualifying competition.  They are:

• Claire Chevalier, Compostables Made Clean, Social and Climate Impact category
• Katy Arons, Continual, Health and Life Sciences category
• Jeremy Shinder, Jere Bear Films, Products and Services category
• Fred Pollard, Rentry Solutions, General category

Student teams will submit slide decks in the national round, which will be reviewed by judges. The four national winners will be announced on December 6.