Making Buffalo a Village Capital Community

Buffalo is sending a delegation to Salt Lake City, UT this weekend to work with teams from Village Capital, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Rise of the Rest, Revolution LLC, the Sorenson Impact Center to earn Buffalo a distinction of one of the initial 16 Village Capital Communities in the United States.  I’m excited to be a part of the Buffalo contingent alongside UB colleague Martin Casstevens and Marnie Lavigne and Mark Branden from LaunchNY. 

As a part of this initiative, UB and LaunchNY have committed to deploying a program to WNY support life sciences entrepreneurs using Village Capital’s unique peer selection methodology.  Peer selection is aimed at democratizing entrepreneurship; alumni of Village Capital programs ave raised $140M+ in follow on capital and created 8,000 jobs. 

You can watch both WIN’s and LaunchNY’s social channels this weekend as we work with our new friends from Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Fresno, Honolulu, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington DC to help America’s entrepreneurs take giant leaps forward.  -Tom