Pre-Seed Workshop - New York
Pre-Seed Workshop - New York
Pre-Seed Workshop - New York

"Creating economic growth in today's Knowledge-Based Economy requires that regions find ways to convert local technology assets and intellectual property into revenue producing businesses. The Pre-Seed Workshop is a perfect vehicle to accomplish this goal."

Jim Senall
President
High Technology of Rochester


PSW is based upon the

Idea Thickening™ methodology.

What is Idea Thickening™?

Learn more here

PSW Delivers Results

Read the Pre-Seed Workshop Six-Year Impact Study

Click here


 

Moving Real Ideas Towards Real Companies

 

PSW Alumni Stories

Camaraderie. My definition: 'people being together because they all like the way it feels-way good.' That was the 'secret sauce' of the Pre-Seed team that I had the pleasure and honor to work with this past spring. We had all the ingredients, but as any good cook knows, it takes more than just that. Let's examine the recipe in greater detail.

Read more about it here!

Pre-Seed Workshop is a community event where teams build companies — not the physical structures, but the foundational plans. And it all happens in two and a half days.

We bring together experts in the community (technical, legal, business, finance, etc.) to determine the viability of new start-up concepts, potentially being spun-out of Universities and Federal Labs.  Our focus is on commercializing hard-science technologies. In fact, we are the only program in the nation that tackles hard-science commercialization in 2½ days … through the use of “crowd analysis”.

Highly-skilled professionals are pre-assigned to work with academic researchers that have patented inventions. The talent on each team is "balanced" to simulate a real start-up company. Six to eight teams are created per workshop.   During the workshop, the teams are led through a series of structured hands-on sessions where they investigate and transform potentially commercializable technologies into https://omgomgomg5j4yrr4mjdv3h5c5xfxtqqs2in7smi65mjps7wvkmqmtqd.com pre-seed stage companies. Teams leave the workshop with a thin commercialization plan for a new start-up. 

The PSW was started in 2004 in Rochester New York and is now being held about ten times a year in various Host City locations throughout the Northeast US and Europe. 

High-performance teams at work during a
Break-Out Session

Growing Pool Of Success

As of May 2018 we have held:

  • 87 Pre-Seed Workshops
  • with 4,178 participants
  • in which 574 “hi-tech ideas”
    were analyzed
  • by 574 teams

We have created or strengthened 170+ high-tech for-profit ventures. Many have gone on to win local, national, and international business plan competitions. Many have received SBIR funding or secured seed and venture capital.  Based on survey results, we estimate that about $100M in follow on capital has been raised and over 600 jobs created.