TENDIGI, a mobile app developer, has become the first graduate of the DUMBO Incubator operated by our supporting member NYU-Poly. The DUMBO incubator is modeled on the university's successful Varick Street program, both also part of the portfolio of incubators supported by New York City Economic Development Corporation.

DUMBO focuses heavily on digital media, mobile, and gaming technology, and since it is closer to the main Poly campus in downtown Brooklyn, it provides a focal point for student entrepreneurial programs. There are 18 startups at DUMBO. For more information about the 14 graduates this year from NYU-Poly's incubation programs, please see the university news release. UPDATE: coverage in Crain's.

Solon Quinn Studios, a high-end film and video production company that is incubating at our supporting member The Tech Garden, is the subject of a profile by the Syracuse Post-Standard. The firm is founded by three partners, each of whom grew up in the region. They went to college at diverse locations including New York City's School of Visual Arts, Syracuse University and SUNY Oswego, and are now producing for corporate and non-profit clients both in Central New York and beyond. The profile is here.

In a perceptive review touching on two of our supporting member incubators, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle highlights the ways "dozens of firms have been nurtured in Rochester-area business incubators and assisted by . . . programs and resources that have become an important tool for local economic development."

The article reinforces our contention that incubators are important not just for the direct services they provide their tenant/clients, but for their overall impact on a community's level of entrepreneurial energy. In fact, University of Rochester vice provost Duncan Moore told the newspaper that transforming the regional economy "from big-business orientation to small business and entrepreneurship" poses a 20-year, generational challenge for Rochester, but that thanks in part to these incubator programs, the climate for new-business formation in the region is "probably the best it's ever been."

The article highlights the experience of startups passing through two incubators operated by High Tech Rochester (the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center and the Rochester BioVenture Center) and also the Venture Creations incubator at Rochester Institute of Technology and its NYSERDA-sponsored Clean Energy Incubator. It also mentions our member The Technology Farm (the Cornell Agriculture & Food Technology Park).

Here is the full story.

Six startups accounting for 84 jobs and $25 million in investment capital raised were graduated from the NYSERDA-sponsored Clean Energy Incubator at RIT (operated in partnership with our supporting member the Venture Creations incubator), according to a blog entry at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The six were:

• Exiscan, winner of the 2011 Rochester Regional Business Plan Competition, supplier of a system for safe inspection of high-voltage electrical equipment;
• Opticool Technologies, supplier of ultra-high-efficiency cooling s ystems for data centers;
• Sweetwater Energy, which converts cellulosic plant waste into feedstock for biofuels and biochemicals;
• Thingworx, a platform for networking machines, sensors and industrial equipment;
• Tenrehte, winner of the 2010 Rochester Regional Business Plan Competition, producer of intelligent power-management systems; and
• Vnomics, an RIT spin-out providing on-board performance analyzers for diesel trucks and buses.