Having an online presence is vital to a company’s success. It helps to establish your brand, prove trustworthiness to potential customers and partners, provides you with increased visibility, and more. 

Whether your company is in need of further development from an app or website perspective — or in some cases both — the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator’s App and Website Accelerator can help move your company forward. Led by our Director of Business Incubation Programming Eric Krohn, this free virtual course helps entrepreneurs evolve their current online presence to meet customer’s needs. 

“The proliferation of digital entrepreneurship has become ever-present in modern society. Our role with the App and Website Accelerator is to find the most promising startups and teach them the skills being used by the top software development firms, greatly increasing their chances of success,” Krohn said. “This also couldn’t happen without the sponsorship of I.B.M., Visions FCU, and Orderstack.io. who make it possible for each graduate to have their app or website developed at no cost to the entrepreneur.”

The most recent cohort completed the program on Wednesday, July 19. Each entrepreneur presented their redesigned app and/or website and customer discovery findings to the group of fellow participants and special invited guests, which included representatives from each of the program’s sponsors. Out of the seven entrepreneurs who participated, three are current Koffman member companies.  

“Each year the App and Website Accelerator attracts more innovative startups that continually outperform any expectations we had, this summer 2023 cohort was no different,” Krohn continued. “The cohort must take on a lot of out-of-class work to make the course beneficial — and they did so impressively.  Each week we met, learned, discussed and evolved. Those action items are essential to any startup growth and was clearly the reason why everyone did so well.”

Participants in this most recent summer 2023 cohort included the following companies:

• Locket: Presented by founder Martin Likewise, this Koffman member company helps users hold on to their memories via photos. Likewise noted the overwhelming number of photographs the average person stores on their phone and how frustrating it can often be to search for a specific moment out of the many captured and saved. In turn, he also notes how tedious it is to print out photos and maintain physical albums in the modern age. This is where the Locket app helps. The Locket technology allows you to import directly to the app from your phone’s camera roll, from there you can swipe to save a picture to the cloud and leave comments, allowing you to curate your memories without parsing through screenshots.
• Ink Extracts: Another Koffman member company, was looking to shift their products from cannabis cartridges to cannabis inspired apparel and accessories by participating in the accelerator. Presented by Greg Haas, one of Ink Extracts co-founders, the conversation emphasized the expressive and creative culture surrounding those involved in the cannabis industry and the untapped apparel industry to cater to their style. Their goal is to bring a fusion of fashion, art and cannabis culture by offering distinctive designs to their audience. 
• NutriMate: Founder Sahar Khamsehi shared the company’s message and core belief that “food is medicine, medicine is food.” NutriMate looks to help individuals achieve their health and weight loss goals, with an emphasis on their metabolic health, through both mobile and web-based interactive applications. They plan to offer both basic and premium service models with additional capabilities.
• Yungle: This presentation by Binghamton University junior Justin Stepensky showcases what they’ve dubbed the future of social media for college students. Upon entering college, many students find difficulty in socializing with a setting where they know no one. Yungle is an app that will match students with one another in a casual environment and offer options to join curated groups, which they’re calling “networks”, based upon shared interests. These networks will have three settings: public for anyone to join, private to be used for smaller individual user events, and exclusive to allow alumni and professionals to offer insights to users and help them establish skillsets for a cost. 
• Yokel: A Koffman member company, founded by KC Budnik, provides users with the ultimate neighborhood marketplace complete with AI recommendations. This is an app for those who want to shop and support local, but might not necessarily know where to go for their needs. Currently, Yokel offers an Olster County, NY shop directory with QR codes posted in local AirBNB’s. The company’s next phase includes offering real-time AI-driven recommendations to help incentivize customers to “support local, shop Yokel.”
• Roadmap: Ever Goldin and his fellow undergraduate co-founders are looking to help people navigate their goals with ease by breaking larger goals down into smaller steps. Roadmap uses ChatGPT4 AI to help a user break down their large goal into more manageable pieces. After users set a goal deadline, the AI will schedule these small steps out on their calender via a Google Chrome extension and eventual Google Calender add-on. Plans will include a free version with five projects per month, a personal use plan and an enterprise level plan.
• One Policy: Founder Liam O’Hamlon is leveraging his past experience as an insurance broker to help customers be able to better understand and get the most out of their insurance plans. He notes that while technology has advanced, the insurance industry has remained stagnant with a lot of plans being confusing to the general public. One Policy’s “The Wallet” will allow anyone with coverage to utilize the dashboard to make claims, revise their policy, contact an agent or even just have a better understanding of what their plan entails. This puts One Policy as an intermediary between the customer and larger insurance companies to make the insurance process easier to understand through a more comprehensive view.

Along with their certificate, upon completion each company who participates receives $5,000 in AWS credits and will be eligible to apply for up to $2,000 in development costs. This funding is made possible by the program sponsors. 

Interested in participating in our App and Website Accelerator? Contact us today to inquire about upcoming cohorts.