Startup companies in the drone industry have moved to Syracuse to participate in a yearlong business competition.

The GENIUS NY competition selected five companies from around the world to compete for a $1 million prize at CenterState CEO’s Tech Garden, a business development service in downtown Syracuse. GENIUS NY is the world’s largest business competition.

Eget Liber, a Syracuse underwater drone company, was selected for the competition alongside companies from Seattle, New York City, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The competition provides resources and events to help the five companies grow and promote themselves to investors, said Jeff Fuchsberg, director of GENIUS NY. The competition is looking for startups with a high potential for growth and a compelling business pitch, Fuchsberg said.

Geopipe, one of the five selected companies, creates algorithms to generate 3D models of the real world for gaming, architecture, engineering and simulation.

Christopher Mitchell, the CEO and co-founder of Geopipe, has been working on developing the company with his team for three and a half years, he said.

“We are looking forward to working with the professionals here at GENIUS to hone our go-to market strategy for gaming, to continue to execute on our technical roadmap and to get to certain milestones in traction and revenue by the end of the one year period of GENIUS,” Mitchell said.

Syracuse is a great place to grow a business, and the GENIUS NY program is a major economic generator, said Eric Ennis, director of business development in the city.

Syracuse works closely with CenterStateCEO and drone industries to keep businesses in Syracuse after the competition concludes. The teams who qualify for GENIUS NY should be able to help create jobs and have a positive economic impact in Syracuse and the central New York region, Fuchsberg said.

Companies who participated in GENIUS NY in the past few years, such as Switzerland’s FotoKite and Sentient Blue from Italy, still have their United States base of operations in Syracuse.

“The million dollar grand prize is very attractive to startup companies all around the world, so it immediately puts central New York on people’s radar, and GENIUS NY on people’s radar,” Fuchsberg said.

Geopipe and British startup BotsAndUs, also in the competition, are both open to creating a headquarters in Syracuse, company spokespersons said.

BotsAndUs found GENIUS NY on social media before entering the competitive application process, said Ayllin Yassin, the company’s business development manager.

The company’s first customer service and operations robot, called Bo, is already having a positive influence in Europe and the Middle East, Yassin said. BotsAndUs will use the GENIUS NY competition to conduct market research in the US, she said.

“(The robot’s) goal is to drive efficiency across customer service, operations and analytics across a multitude of industries and sectors,” Yassin said.

Despite the $1 million prize, the competition is more of a collaboration because the five companies have very different products and customers that don’t overlap, Mitchell said.

Ennis said the city is in the process of constructing a $12 million Tech Garden expansion, with GENIUS NY as one of its major focuses.

“As GENIUS NY continues to expand and companies really pay attention to Syracuse and the drone industry, I think the future looks bright and I think the Tech Garden itself is one of those world class centers that’s helping grow that,” Ennis said.

Published on January 28, 2020 at 11:22 pm

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