Comptroller’s report details difficulties for Syracuse

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A fiscal profile on the city of Syracuse from New York’s comptroller paints a picture of a municipality challenged by vacancy, tax-exempt properties, and low

Local Independent Insurance Agents group elects officers

Insurance & Financial Services

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Shared Work program retained 3,300 jobs, NY state estimates

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, New York News, Small Business

Employers in New York avoided cutting more than 3,000 jobs in 2012 by using a shared work program, with Central New York and the Mohawk

SBA starting third season of Emerging Leaders program in Syracuse

Health Care, Nonprofits, Small Business

SYRACUSE — The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has opened a small-business training program for its third year in Syracuse. Syracuse is one of just

Chitre rises to oversee Excellus pharmacy program

Health Care, Insurance & Financial Services

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Central New York’s largest health insurer, has promoted its director of clinical services, strategy, and policy to vice president of pharmacy management.

Syracuse South Side health clinic formally opens

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Health Care, Small Business

SYRACUSE — A free health-care clinic on Syracuse’s South Side held its grand opening Feb. 16. The grand opening officially launched the Rahma Health Clinic

St. Joseph’s finishes steel placement for new surgical suite

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Health Care

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Startup Labs wraps up

Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

SYRACUSE — The first edition of Startup Labs Syracuse wrapped up this month with the program’s Demo Day. The event took place Feb. 7. The five final teams in the competition pitched to a panel of judges in a public event. They are competing for a total of $350,000 in cash and prizes. The money

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SYRACUSE — The first edition of Startup Labs Syracuse wrapped up this month with the program’s Demo Day.

The event took place Feb. 7. The five final teams in the competition pitched to a panel of judges in a public event. They are competing for a total of $350,000 in cash and prizes.

The money includes a $150,000 cash prize and the Market Ready Award presented by Eric Mower + Associates, which will provide a suite of marketing and branding services valued at $50,000. The finalists already received initial investments of $30,000 each.

The competition drew 97 initial applicants.

“For us the mentorship has been phenomenal,” says Dan Cody, chief operating officer at SnagMobile, LLC of Delmar. “The program has helped us identify where we can break barriers to entry.”

SnagMobile is a mobile app that allows users to order and pay for food and drinks at live events without leaving their seats. The company launched its app in two minor league baseball stadiums last summer.

The company is also working to deploy its technology at venues like golf courses, hotels, and casinos. The hotel market, Cody says, probably holds the most potential for SnagMobile now.

Stadiums are more of a seasonal business and SnagMobile’s leaders believe there’s demand for mobile payments among hotel guests.

“This market is completely new,” Cody says. “We need to prove ourselves.”

He expects two or three leaders to emerge in the space in the next 12 to 18 months. The idea is for SnagMobile to be one of them.

CenterState CEO unveiled Startup Labs in September as the successor to the Creative Core Emerging Business Competition, which began in 2007 and awarded a total of more than $1 million to area companies over the course of six competitions.

The final teams moved into the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse in January to begin a 22-day program of working with more than 50 mentors and advisers to advance their ideas.

The competition’s prizes will be presented at CenterState CEO’s annual meeting on April 8.

Syracuse is the first U.S. city to host the Startup Labs program, which grew from the Startup Weekend program. That effort brings together entrepreneurs in weekend-long events around the world aimed at developing new business ideas. The Tech Garden has hosted the events in the past.

Startup Labs is based in Seattle and has run its program in Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, and India.

Startup Labs is partnering with CenterState CEO and Excell Partners of Rochester to bring the program to the region. Each partner invests an initial $50,000 to start the program. An additional $200,000 of support is provided by the competition’s 10 private sponsors including lead sponsor, National Grid.

Other major sponsors include M&T Bank and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

“When you work by yourself, you can become stubborn and get stuck in your own head,” says Bea Arthur, founder and CEO of Pretty Padded Room, one of the other finalists. “It’s been interesting to get feedback.”

Pretty Padded Room, based in New York City, provides online therapy. The service launched two years ago and its group of 10 therapists work with an average of 30 to 50 clients a month.

Arthur says she now wants to deploy the technology platform she’s created for the business to other therapists.

“This is super scalable,” she says.

Telemedicine and distance therapy are growing spaces and Arthur wants to make her business a major player in the space.

Startup Labs, she says, is helping figure out how to get there.

“Programs like this help you focus and put your next steps into action and give you insight into what investors are looking for,” she adds.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

Power Engineers looks to tap local talent pool

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — Power Engineers launched and is growing its Syracuse office with the aim of tapping into the technical talent base present in the region. Power opened its office in Syracuse last May. The firm employs 16 people in a 7,500-square-foot space at 1 Dupli Park Drive. The site has room to grow to more

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SYRACUSE — Power Engineers launched and is growing its Syracuse office with the aim of tapping into the technical talent base present in the region.

Power opened its office in Syracuse last May. The firm employs 16 people in a 7,500-square-foot space at 1 Dupli Park Drive. The site has room to grow to more than 40, says Rod Coffey, who heads Power’s local office and is the northeast regional manager for substations.

Coffey says the office could double in size in 2013 and notes Power has no plans to cap the local site’s size.

“So long as Syracuse produces people, we’ll continue to bring them in,” he says. “We can’t find enough people in our industry.”

In Syracuse, Power works mainly on design of power delivery systems within the electrical grid. The office has other capabilities including civil, structural, mechanical, and environmental engineering, Coffey says.

The local market has plenty of good engineering schools Power hopes to tap, he adds. And there are experienced engineers in the region as well.

Power could also draw new employees from schools in the North Country as students from those colleges drift toward larger communities like Syracuse in search of more opportunities, Coffey says.

The need for work in the energy space is not likely to ebb anytime soon, he adds. Demands on the power grid will continue to grow and companies like Power will find plenty of work.

The firm had already been working for utilities with a presence in New York even before the Syracuse office opened. They include National Grid and Iberdrola.

Power Engineers also already had an office in Freeport on Long Island before launching in Syracuse.

Recruiting more people from the state should only help Power’s business in the market continue to expand, Coffey says. He adds that local employees could find themselves working on projects from around the country.

But the energy environment in New York is unique in some ways, Coffey adds. It’s the only state with its own independent system operator (ISO), the entity which controls the power grid, he explains.

Most other ISOs span multiple states. New England has its own, for example, and one of the operators in the Midwest also covers parts of Canada.

New York’s one-state-only ISO can make working on power projects here different, Coffey says.

“New York really is an island,” he says.

Power’s Syracuse office has already found itself working on a very public project that had nothing to do with energy. The company worked on rigging the line for Nik Wallenda’s high-wire walk across Niagara Falls last year.

The task wasn’t as simple as stringing a wire from one side to the other, Coffey says. Power added balancing sticks that hung below the line to prevent it from rotating as Wallenda crossed.

The firm also had to calculate the tension required to keep the wire from sagging under its own weight as it spanned the distance across the chasm.

In addition to Syracuse, Power Engineers could look to open additional new Northeast offices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Coffey says. The employee-owned company has more than 30 offices in the U.S. and abroad and employs more than 1,700 people.

The firm is headquartered in Hailey, Idaho.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

Binghamton Web firm sets up shop downtown

Regional News, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

BINGHAMTON — A Web-design firm launched last year is making the leap from home offices to a physical location in downtown Binghamton. FreshySites began unofficially and 2011 and its founders formed their company just last year. They built their business from their homes to a base of 77 customers. They opened their 1,300-square-foot office, at

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BINGHAMTON — A Web-design firm launched last year is making the leap from home offices to a physical location in downtown Binghamton.

FreshySites began unofficially and 2011 and its founders formed their company just last year. They built their business from their homes to a base of 77 customers.

They opened their 1,300-square-foot office, at 37 Court St. in Binghamton, in January. Four of the company’s five employees are originally from the Binghamton area, but left to attend college.

Four of the firm’s employees are based in Binghamton and the fifth works from Fairfax, Va.

The partners decided to launch the company in Binghamton in part because it offers a host of potential customers in the small and mid-size business space, says Ben Giordano, FreshySites’ co-founder and lead developer. Many of the local companies also don’t have an updated Web presence.

There’s a need in the market, Giordano says, for a firm that can help local businesses improve their Web sites quickly and inexpensively.

He adds that FreshySites is trying to offer Web design almost as a retail product. The company’s office is in street-level retail space. The idea is for potential clients to be able to walk in off the street and talk about their sites easily.

Giordano also notes that the company’s goal is customer volume. He says the firm can put together a basic website for $250 and is aiming to grow its client roster quickly.

“The way websites are built…has changed,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be thousands of dollars to do this.”

FreshySites expects to grow its customer base to 200 by the end of the year. The firm is also likely to add another employee in 2013, Giordano says.

The company’s price points open the door to businesses that might have been able to afford a Web presence previously, he adds. And he says that just because the company offers an inexpensive product doesn’t mean it’s of poor quality.

Giordano’s background is in advertising and marketing. While working in that space, he says he saw the need for Web design aimed squarely at small companies that don’t have massive budgets.

The new office is also a key part of FreshySites’ strategy.

“We want customers to be able to come in and meet with us and feel comfortable stopping by the office,” Giordano says. “If they have a request, we want them to stop by. We want to put a big public face on it. We want to get to know our customers.”

FreshySites is not focusing on any specific industry niche, but rather concentrating on its geographic market. Eventually, that will mean expanding with offices in other cities, which could include Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, and Scranton, Pa.

The headquarters and much of the development work will remain based in Binghamton, but sales and support staff will be located in other cities, Giordano says. If things go well in 2013, he adds, the company could be looking at another location by the end of the year.

Giordano co-founded FreshySites with Vincent Consumano, who grew up in Manassas, Va. Giordano and Consumano, who works from Fairfax, Va. now, were roommates at Virginia Tech.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

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