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Investigative Post: Progress and problems for 43North startup competition

43North

The 43North business plan competition had a problem. The Buffalo Billion funded program offers winning startups investments of a quarter of a million dollars and up.  In exchange, companies have to give 43North a five percent stake and come to Buffalo for at least a year.

After that year was up, the local companies stayed. But the ones that that moved to Western New York from somewhere else were leaving. The first two years of the competition saw fourteen out-of-town companies relocate to Buffalo. Only two still have employees here.

So as organizers prepared for the third year of competition in 2016, they changed the recruitment process, focus on companies that would be a good fit for the region.

Click here to read the full report from Investigative Post.

Charlotte Keith joined Investigative Post in September 2014, after graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.