ERA Educates NYC Entrepreneurs On Growth

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), a pillar in the NYC’s startup ecosystem, held their open door accelerator information event @AWSloft. Over 100 budding entrepreneurs were eager to catch the eyes of ERA’s leadership team and become the accelerator’s next success story. Like Silicon Valley, this is where you will find savvy startup founders addressing concerns and offering solutions on their respective sectors. EdTech, AdTech, Fashion, FinTech, HRM, Mobile Hardware, Cosmetics and Social Media are all spaces that the event’s attendees are currently looking to disrupt with their respective startups. After an hour-long panel discussion with five ERA alumni, dozens of attendees opted to participate in a round of lightning pitches; The audience was seemingly blown away during the lightning pitch segment, many of the startups competing for a spot in ERA’s Summer 2018 cohort are already profitable and possess IP. It appears as though the ERA team may have its toughest job yet, as there seems to be many promising startup companies right here in NYC.

ERA, founded by Murat Aktihanoglu and Jonathan Axelrod, began as a non-profit in 2007 and has gained significant traction to date. As NYC’s largest accelerator program, ERA aims to increase access to funding, mentorship and workshops for its cohorts while conditioning founders for the inevitable ebbs and flows of every entrepreneurial journey. ERA continues to support NYC’s startup community, they have hosted over 300 events that have attracted a staggering 50,000 participants. To date, over 150 ERA alumni companies have raised more than $250 million in investor capital. Five founders from ERA’s alumni network were present and engaged in an educational dialogue with an audience of the world’s next tech leaders. The panel included Mark Webster(founder @Sayspring), Gilad Rotem (founder @CupsApp), Petere Miner(founder @CoLoadX), Eric Berry (founder @TripleLiftHQ) and Dr. Dawud Gordon (founder @TwoSenseLabs). During the discussion, TripleLift’s founder Eric Berry stood out to many after sharing about ERA’s influence on their traction to date; TripleLift may certainly be one of ERA’s biggest success stories.

TripleLift operates in the AdTech space, their product leverages computer vision to transform visual content into native ads that compliment the look and feel of a given website. To date, TripleLift has raised $16.6 million across three rounds, Edison Partners led their Series B in 2015. What is most impressive about TripleLift is their unorthodox journey to the $100 million revenue milestone that they boast today. One big takeaway from Berry’s story was that TripleLift pivoted a total of four times during their four month cohort, their existing investors at the time were displeased with the pivoting but Berry used his time in ERA to “find out who [they] were” as a company. After graduating from ERA in 2012, TripleLift has already grown to 200 employees. To close, Berry expressed his sincere gratitude to the ERA leadership team for their hand in TripleLift’s success, ERA allowed TripleLift to discover its identity and provided the necessary resources to scale during their cohort. Accelerators have been proven to produce some of the world’s largest companies; with ERA’s success stories to date, they certainly possess the resources to produce the nation’s next market disruptors.

ERA’s Summer 2018 cohort will mark their 15th cohort to date, over the course of the past decade, the ERA leadership team has provided the necessary tools and access to aspiring entrepreneurs in an effort to promote tech disruption and grow NYC’s startup ecosystem. During such a pivotal time in tech, ERA provides a platform for entrepreneurs in NYC to explore emerging sectors, ultimately creating an environment similar to that of Silicon Valley. ERA’s tireless efforts to educate and promote success across several generations of founders speaks to the recent influx of NYC-based startups, entrepreneurs presumably gain a sense of confidence knowing that a powerful resource such as ERA exists in their backyards. As a staple of NYC’s tech community, ERA will continue to promote the success of surrounding startups as well as educate entrepreneurs, investors and tech enthusiasts alike. Entrepreneurs will certainly not want to forego the opportunity to work with NYC’s best and brightest thought leaders this Summer.