ROME, NY — After a successful first year, the graduate startups from the 2015 Commercialization Academy have begun to hire in the Mohawk Valley ecosystem. The Griffiss Institute, in collaboration with Wasabi Ventures, has responded to this growth by creating a Commercialization Academy Job Board to display current openings at each new startup coming out of the Academy. The job board can be found at commercializationacademy.org and griffissinstitute.org, and currently has four job postings listed. Wasabi Ventures General Partner, TK Kuegler, is a big advocate of the job board stating, “The Mohawk Valley area has the fuel (talent) to grow this ecosystem, and I see the job board as the engine that will propel the Upstate New York area forward in the coming years.”
Online shopping service VidFall is among the new startups hiring, as they look to recruit the next wave of great talent from the area. Winners of the $25,000 judges’ vote on Demo Day, VidFall is looking to quickly apply those funds to build out their startup team, and looking for multiple positions to support their rapid growth.
“The real measure of success, with The Commercialization Academy, is the creation of jobs here in the Upstate New York ecosystem,” says William Wolf, Director at Griffiss Institute, “and this Commercialization Academy Job Board is a realization of that accomplishment.”
The Commercialization Academy is blazing a path in Department of Defense (DoD) Intellectual Property (IP) Tech Transfer; fundamentally changing the way a startup gets built by pairing hungry entrepreneurs with Air Force Research Lab technologies, and creating new companies to impact the local ecosystem. Each startup company pitched an audience of over 100+ people, on this past October’s Demo Day, in which two teams received $25,000 to scale their startups. These startups are now turning to the Mohawk Valley ecosystem, with those funds to hire great employees, as they continue to scale their startups.
Positions featured on the new job board range from Account Executives to Community Managers, but each position will play a pivotal role in the success of each young tech firm. The Community Manager role at VidFall will be the go-to role in planning and executing, from beginning to end, VidFall Crowd Deals, the most important part of VidFall’s business model, as well as, a large list of other responsibilities within the growing startup. Building these original building blocks of each tech startup will lead to future growth and team development in the Upstate New York area.
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About The Commercialization Academy
The Commercialization Academy is a Griffiss Institute entrepreneurial education program sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (AFRL/RI). The Academy pairs students with high-potential AFRL technologies with the goals of developing entrepreneurial leaders and launching new technology ventures. www.commercializationacademy.org.
About Griffiss Institute
The Griffiss Institute (GI) was established in 2002 as an independent 501(c)(3) entity governed by a Board of Directors. The primary role of the GI is to advocate and facilitate the co-operation of private industry, academia and government in developing solutions to critical cyber security problems. Another prime role is to build upon technologies under development at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Information Directorate to further strengthen the security of our nation’s cyber infrastructure. Learn more at www.griffissinstitute.org.
About Wasabi Ventures
Wasabi Ventures is a venture capital, incubator, and consulting firm that specializes in building and advising early stage technology companies. In the last 10+ years, Wasabi Ventures has built, financed, and advised over 200 startups. Wasabi Ventures has taken an active role in the AFRL Tech Transfer program, working closely with affiliates of the program to strengthen the Mohawk Valley ecosystem. www.wasabiventures.com
About VidFall
A team dedicated to making shopping affordable for the masses, VidFall is a daily deals website for goods, services, and travel, where prices fall because users are watching sponsored videos. Each time a user watches a video advertisement on VidFall.com, they take the money advertisers pay them to show that video and apply it towards discounting a retail item. Thus, decreasing the price the consumer would pay if buying it outright. But one isn’t on VidFall alone. In fact, a whole group of users are simultaneously watching videos, generating a huge discount.
