Venture Hub awarded $50,000 in prize money for equitable access to entrepreneurship
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has named the Hudson Valley Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz as a Stage One winner for the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition.
The Hudson Valley Venture Hub will receive a $50,000 cash prize for its impactful and inclusive approach to nurturing a collaborative national innovation ecosystem to advance small business research and development from ideas to the market.
The award recognizes the Venture Hub’s signature Collaboration Corner model, designed to bring in new innovators and organizations focused on cleantech and sharing economy startups. These Collaboration Corners get the ecosystem talking and sharing information about key business resources and incentives, and help entrepreneurs find partners to pilot their solution, co-founders to join the early-stage efforts, and SUNY New Paltz faculty and students available to assist with field trials of a new product.
“We’re thrilled to receive recognition on this innovation model to foster entrepreneurship,” said Eliza Edge, Director of the Hudson Valley Venture Hub. “The model in fact will not require new programming or curriculum, but the intentional connection of programs, activities, and networks already operational and effective on the ground. With Stage One funding from SBA, we will identify new and nurture existing partnerships with regional organizations that focus on sustainability and clean technology.”
More information about the Hudson Valley Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz is available here.
About the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition
The U.S. Small Business Administration hosts this annual competition to foster connections between entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, philanthropies, corporations, investors, and other shared resources, and catalyze strategic ecosystem partnerships to build community and organizational capacity for the successful launch, growth, and scale of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-based entrepreneurs.
SBA welcomed Stage One submissions from a broad range of organizations with a collaborative vision to nurture a national ecosystem for equitable access to entrepreneurship. Winners of Stage One were selected through a multi-tier review panel process with experts in entrepreneurship, business, innovation, and strategic planning both inside and out of the federal government.
