Level Up Your Entrepreneurial Journey with these Upcoming Events

Are you an entrepreneur looking to take your business to the next level? Then you won't want to miss these upcoming events hosted by Techstars. Here's a breakdown of what to expect:

Running a Series A Fundraising Process

Fundraising can be a daunting task for any entrepreneur, especially when it comes to securing funding for a Series A round. But fear not, because Techstars is here to help. In this event, you'll learn everything you need to know about running a successful Series A fundraising process. From board dynamics to investor communication to financial modeling tips, this event covers it all. Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain valuable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and investors. Join us on Tuesday, March 7 at 1:00 PM MT.

How to Make Your Application Stand Out

Are you interested in applying to Techstars? Then this event is a must-attend. Applying to an accelerator can be a competitive process, but with the right tips and tricks, you can make your application stand out from the crowd. In this event, you'll gain valuable insights on what to include in your application, what to leave out, and how to showcase your business in the best possible light. Join us on Tuesday, March 21 at 12:00 PM MT and get ready to take your application to the next level.

Techstars Virtual Meet and Greet

If you're curious about Techstars and want to learn more about our mentorship-driven accelerators, then this event is for you. In this virtual meet and greet, you'll have the opportunity to learn more about our programs, the entrepreneurs we work with, and the benefits of joining the Techstars community. You'll also have the chance to connect with current and former Techstars entrepreneurs, as well as our team of experts. Join us on Tuesday, March 28 at 12:30 PM MT and see if Techstars is the right fit for you.

Don't miss out on these exciting events hosted by Techstars. Whether you're looking to fundraise, apply to our program, or learn more about our community, we've got you covered. Join us and take your business to the next level.

Blackstone Launchpad’s Feature in the Albany Student Press!

On Tuesday, February 4, 2020, Blackstone Launchpad had the amazing opportunity to be featured in the Albany Student Press (ASP)! The article, written by Amanda Alvarez, spoke about our upcoming annual business competition scheduled to be held on Friday, March 27 at the Massry Center for Business. Winners of the competition would split $15,000 in prize money to help jumpstart their businesses! The event will start off by dividing each team by their categories; after the teams would pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. The top participating teams would receive a quarter of the prize money, and the final three winners of the entire competition will split the remainder of the prize money. Before the competition teams are encouraged to meet with Blackstone members to practice their pitch, or any answer any questions. 

Blackstone Launchpad is a campus-based entrepreneurship organization; young entrepreneurs are welcomed to speak to members of Blackstone if they have any questions relating to their business ideas. In 2016, winner of Blackstone’s first business competition was graduate student Tony Hoang, who studied at chemistry at UAlbany. He won the prize money and was able to kickstart his company Advanced Modular Instruments, which offers enhanced research in biology and chemistry laboratories. Through Blackstone, he was able to perfect his presentation skills and learn the different aspects of a successful business, which benefitted his early success. If you’re interested, sign-up for the event will start in mid-February, follow Blackstone Launchpad (@launchpadalbany) on Instagram to keep up with updates! 

BYOB Tip #6- Explained

“Network Everywhere You Go.”

Networking is one of, if not the most important aspect of running a business. In order for your business to expand you need an audience or customer base, and how do you do this? By networking!

You may have already done this by creating social media accounts through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin. But let’s take the saying “network everywhere you go” in regards to expanding your platform on other social media platforms. For example, depending on your targeted audience adapt to different ways in which you could expand. Take Pinterest as an example, Pinterest may open doors to more opportunities such as networking with a group you weren’t necessarily targeting before by simply using their tools. At any time, anywhere you are you can access these platforms while your business continues to benefit from it!

Aside from the digital aspect of networking use yourself as a tool. When taking part in social activities whether they be professional gatherings or personal activities don’t forget to mention your business. You never know who will potentially open doors for new opportunities just by strengthening your business connections.

-Amanda Alvarez

Fode, founder of Fodé Naturals

Fode Dip creator of Fodé Naturals shares his business start-up with Blackstone LaunchPad

“Growing up in NYC, I was always surrounded by commercial buildings and advertisements of brands that were portrayed to be superior to other brands. This ultimately resulted in me trusting “name brands" over most other alternatives. Whether I was looking for food, clothes, or lotion—It was the brand name that ultimately won my attention.

This changed for me when I became more in tune with my background and culture. Coming from African descent, I learned the importance of nature in our lives and interdependence between humans and nature. This observation shifted my perspective in many ways; most importantly, my perspective as a consumer.

This shift resulted in me reading the ingredients of anything before I bought into it and resulted in me making my own alternatives to what's out there in the market. I began using shea butter and African black soap instead of baby lotion and dove. And when I wanted something better that I couldn’t find, I made it myself.

My best example of this is my hand-whipped shea butter. I began working on this product during my junior year of college and remember everyone asking me where I got it from. This ultimately made me start thinking about offering it to other people and later resulted in the birth of Fodé Naturals.

Since then I've been working on creating innovative goods that are all-natural and sustainable for everyday people, so they can have access to a better alternative to the artificial products that are already embedded in our minds as being “the best".”

BYOB Tip #5- Explained

“Devise an operations model”

Upon creating your financial model for your business expand into a variety of models, for example, an operations model. What is an operations model? Much like your financial model, the operations model helps you keep track of your business but from a different perspective. An operating model helps facilitate owners and employees to deliver the aspects of your business model, so who and what do you need to maintain production?

To begin, the operating model puts your ideas into play making it easier to assign roles, asses needs, and accomplish milestones. It helps break down the problems within your business and enables flexible solutions, you will essentially be able to define, explain, and fix a potential scenario and issue that may occur within your business. 

When it comes to the ‘team operations’ this model allows for a fully designed and straight-to-the-point model. It can also prevent a crisis by allowing you to revert to your detailed explanations on what to say or do in such an event, ultimately it allows for better care of clients, employees, service, and better production. 

You may want to launch your business as soon as possible but consider developing a set of models before you begin. You don’t want your business to fail because you didn’t have a “manual” of how to operate your business. Do your research about how to begin creating your business models and follow it through. 

-Amanda Alvarez

BYOB Tip #4- Explained

“Come up with a financial model”

In order to get started on your business, you may want to or already have started a financial model. So what is a financial model? Think of it as a financial tool to help display solutions to a real-world financial problem. Financial models can help you through various aspects but how will it help? Essentially a model can be more structured, dynamic, contains hypothetical outcomes, and can show future outcomes to your financial project.  

Financial models are ultimately designed to depict real-life situations in numbers to help individuals make better financial decisions. But it’s more than that, the problems will be analyzed and translated into a concept that can exponentially grow your business. 

You can start by asking three questions:

1. How much are you going to charge?

2. How much will it cost to run the business?

3. How profitable can you be?

Keep in mind when you create your financial model to practice flexibility, structure, and transparency. Flexibility allows your model to be adaptable to every situation but it all depends on how simple it is to modify your model when necessary. Structure is important, if not the most important aspect of your model. The model should be able to represent reality in an organized and rigorous fashion. Finally, transparency, based on the numerical/statistical aspect should be easily understood by other financial modelers and non-modelers. 

-Amanda Alvarez

BYOB Tip #3- Explained

“Criticism is your best friend”

Throughout your life, you’ve probably heard this in several forms more than once. Criticism can be taken in either optimistically or pessimistically if you find yourself on the pessimistic side consider making criticism your best friend.

Instead of letting the criticism demotivate you look for a way to learn from it. For example, let’s say you come up with what you believe to be a great idea for a new app, you have everything planned out and now you want to share your ideas with others. Amidst introducing your idea to your friends and family several tell you “it won’t work”, “there’s an app like that already”, or “ I don’t think it’s a good idea” instead of negatively impacting your success, take it and learn from it. How you perceive that feedback is essential to your growth, you can say “I can find a way to make it work I just had to put more time into it”, “Yes there is an app like it already but what can I do to make mine even better”, and “I started planning because I know it is a good idea.”

Once you make criticism your best friend you can find yourself reaching for more than you intended. In a sense, by taking feedback in an optimistic way you allow for the flow of more ideas, you’re given many platforms to expand on, and you never know what you can gain from it. Criticism can ultimately stunt your growth if you let it by simply allowing for it to overrule your goals.  

-Amanda Alvarez

Sam Mere, founder of Campus Pro

Samuel Mere creator of CampusPro shares his business start-up with Blackstone LaunchPad

Our entrepreneur of the month is Samuel Mere, he is a University at Albany alumni who graduated in 2016. Samuel majored in Criminal Justice with minors in Business, Portuguese, and Sociology. His professional background includes working for companies such as Facebook, Apple, and C.H Robinson. He is currently a full-time entrepreneur working on his first venture CampusPro.

We interviewed Samuel to gain insight into his start-up pf CampusPro:

Why did you decide to start this business?

“Throughout my academic career at the University at Albany, I was a Resident Assistant (RA) on Indian Quad for two years. During my first year as an RA, there were two residents on my floor who had side hustles. One was a cosmetologist who provided services for hair and makeup. The other gave haircuts to his friends. Both of these students were using their skills to make extra money in their free time. However, they faced challenges finding new clients who were not their roommates or close friends. At the time, there were not many resources for student freelancers to market themselves and get new clients. So, I took it upon myself to create a platform that would allow students to conveniently promote their services to other students on campus, so they can get more clients and make more money…It’s called CampusPro.”

What problem are you solving?

“There is a lack of opportunities available for college students to make extra money during their free time. Not every student qualifies for on-campus employment and not every student has a schedule that complies with a part-time job. However, college students today are freelancing, but they don’t have the appropriate tools or resources to market themselves successfully. The current solutions are inefficient, ineffective and expensive. CampusPro makes it easier for college students to get involved in freelancing, so they can have the extra money in their pockets for everyday spending.”

How did you start solving it?

“The first step I took when starting CampusPro, I researched the freelancing economy. I did not want to get involved with an industry that did not have potential or that was in decline. I learned the freelancing economy, shared economy and on-demand economy are all rapidly growing markets that are outpacing the traditional workforce. The second part of my research, looking into potential competition and what marketplaces already exist for freelancers and college students. Freelance marketplaces already exist such as Fiverr and Upwork, but those platforms are not tailored to college students. Student-to-Student marketplaces exist as well, but they are focused more on reselling textbooks or only offer tutoring services. After my research, I immediately got involved with startup events in the community to network and learn because I didn’t know exactly how to bring this idea to life. I met entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, and developers who all shared their feedback and expertise on how I should pursue my idea. Before you knew it, I hired a development firm to create the MVP and then we launched our first beta at the University at Albany during the Fall 2018 semester. To date, we hired a Chief Technical Officer (CTO), released a new version of the app and are continuing to launch at new campuses such as UAlbany, The College of Saint Rose, Siena College, The Sage Colleges, SUNY New Paltz and more. Our app is now available in the App Store and coming soon to the Google Play Store.”

BYOB Tip #2- Explained

“Surround yourself with people who you can learn from”

Learning from others consists of a multitude of factors such as what to do, what not to do, what to change, where to go, what to try, etc. Everyone you meet has something valuable to teach you but how effective it is, is completely up to you. 

You may have a line-up of friends, family, and acquaintances who you find yourself coming into contact with every day but may find it hard to relate with. This can be for a series of reasons such as not having the same goals, seeing things differently, or just not liking the same things. Our advice is don't ditch those around you but surround yourself with more people who can learn from. 

We revert back to starting a business, you may know what you want to do but not know where to begin. There is an abundance of resources that are there to help you whether it be a mentor, friends who have started a business, or even workshops/classes on business start-ups. These are people you may want to gather information from and hold close for future references, people who essentially have/had the same goals you do.

If you’re a student on campus consider joining clubs that relate to your interests, for example, ‘Delta Sigma Pi’ is an international coed professional fraternity focusing on the study of business. This is a group of students around the same age who are there for the same reason you are, talk to them, share your interest and ideas, these are people who you can learn from and can continue expanding interests with. 

Overall when possible surround yourself with people who aspire you to be better, show you new heights, uplift you, and give you solid benchmarks for success!

-Amanda Alvarez

BYOB Tip #1- Explained

“Only Pursue Something You’re Passionate About”

How many times have you seen or heard of someone go into a career and instantly regret it? You probably answered a lot, well one of the major reasons why is simply because of money. Money tends to be a huge factor when deciding your future career, our first tip is to only pursue something your passionate about. 

When pursuing a business, you may want to keep in mind the foundations of your start-up, what made you want to pursue it? Passion plays a key role in this aspect. It is important that you keep this mind, for example, you wouldn’t want to have a doctor that doesn’t have compassion for others or a veterinarian who doesn’t like animals. So ask yourself, am I passionate enough to pursue my business? Am I going into this with the right intentions? And will I be able to serve others?

Pursuing something you're passionate about ultimately leads to a successful yet pleasant work environment.

-Amanda Alvarez 

Introducing Our Blog

UAlbany Blackstone LaunchPad is a program that guides entrepreneurs and helps the launching of business start-ups. We have designed a “start-up” ecosystem that has essentially transformed profound ideas into commercial solutions. At the University at Albany, we have joined as a team to offer educational programming, events, funding opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs. 

During this new academic school year, we are introducing a new blog series on our website. The new blog will feature business start-ups, entrepreneur tips, and entrepreneur related news.

Our mission is to motivate aspiring entrepreneurs to begin their business start-up, as well as inform students, faculty, and alumni on the entrepreneur process.

-Amanda Alvarez