BFTP/CNP

Ben Franklin Technology Partners joins forces with the Invent Penn State initiative to showcase the Summer TechCelerator Cohort and their startup business ideas! For over a decade, the TechCelerator Startup Boot Camp has been supporting emerging entrepreneurs, and this year is no different.

Witness seven entrepreneurial teams present their business concept to a panel of judges for a chance to win $15,000 to get their startup, up and running. The entrepreneurial teams have been tirelessly crafting their business plan and pitch deck over the 10-week course.

The seven entrepreneurial teams chosen for the 2023 summer program represent an exciting mix of products:

• North Country Gear Works (Dustin Coles, McKean County): North Country Gear Works manufactures high quality and versatile outdoor equipment for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation for outdoorsmen and women in the East and Midwest.
• Lightscline (Ankur Verma & Ayush Goyal, Centre County): Lightscline is eliminating up to 90% of sensor data analytics costs by reducing data infrastructure and human capital costs of B2B companies that own and operate using sensor data.
• Lehr Labs (Evan Lehr, York County): Lehr Labs is designing and building a high temperature, high performance FDM 3D printer that can process almost all available 3D printing materials at larger size formats more efficiently and cost effectively for manufacturers.
• Hoffman Appalachian Farm (Joshua Brock, Elk County): Hoffman Appalachian Farms is expanding their existing hops operations, adding small grains, hemp and other crops to diversify and is building working partnerships with local breweries and PA Wilds marketing efforts to establish the region as an Agritourist destination.
• KiposTech (Hema Ravindran & Raj Singh, Lancaster County): KiposTech is a pioneering startup that harnesses non-thermal plasma technology for indoor air quality solutions, specifically targeting healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Their patent-pending disinfection systems offer comprehensive protection against pathogens and pollutants, effectively breaking the chain of infection.
• Allegro Learning Solutions (Joel Kline & Shaun Donovan, Dauphin County): Allegro Learning Solutions is building a workforce platform that engages and matches pools of unqualified employee candidates with the programs and training to become qualified employees for medium – large size employers.
• Dolphin Studios (Drew Piispanen, Dauphin County): Dolphin Studios is a chatbot consulting firm, specializing in knowledge-based chatbots through contextual learning for businesses to improve the overall customer service experience by providing targeted information – more efficiently. The company chatbot plugin would be useable for three primary ecommerce platforms – shopify, woocommerce and Magento 2.