Programs

Let’s Get to Work

If you’re a student or member of our local community who is looking to take your product or service to market, we want to help accelerate the process. ThINC offers programs to help you generate better business ideas, Refine and Accelerate your startup (The Refinery), and meet other CNY Creatives (MESH). We give aspiring entrepreneurs the resources to make their visions a reality.

Get your learn on.

We host special events throughout the year where we bring in speakers from around the area and around the country to talk about startups, tech, building businesses and building the future. We host lively discussions, social events, and standalone workshops that focus on topics such as ideation, failure, intellectual property, building teams and more.

We’re building an entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout upstate New York. That means collaborating and fostering ‘creative collisions’ through events at and around the thINCubator. We serve as a place where entrepreneurs, would-be entrepreneurs, techies, hackers, hustlers and hipsters can connect, get to know each other and start building projects.

Refinery

The Refinery

The Refinery is an 8-week program that accepts applications for teams/ companies with a mission to accelerate. The thINCubator offers the group program 3 times per year for up to 6 teams at a time and offers an individual tract.

So, what is the Refinery built for?

The Refinery is for new entrepreneurs who understand their business idea, their target market and who have a beta product, existing service, or prototype. We focus on setting measurable goals and work with you to aggressively accelerate your business – growing it in the company of other entrepreneurs.

The program is free and open to both students and community members.

How do you know your business model has the potential to be successful? Have you done market research? Have you identified your core team or personnel needs? If you have determined the answers to some or all of these questions, our program may be right for you.

The Refinery accelerates the process of business development and deployment through mentoring and coaching. We want to rapidly move each participant or team through the process of building their business in a smart way, with an end-goal of producing revenue generating entities or investment ready firms. Build your team, build your network and build your business.

Sound like a fit?

Apply for the spring or winter program or inquire about the individual tract using the application below.

Program Overview

“All-Hands” meetings every other week. Each meeting will have rapid round-robin updates from each team who will report on progress and anchors. Transparency is a must. We’ll also have topic focused discussions relevant to the collective goals of the teams.

Weekly One-on-One sessions – individual coaching sessions are designed to keep participants on track and take deeper dives into issues and challenges that are impeding growth or acceleration of your business. Check-ins may be in-person or via Skype/ FaceTime

SCRUM progress updates via Slack – All participants will join our private Slack team where they are expected to provide regular quick updates to other teams regarding what they’re doing to accomplish their goals. Slack is also a great tool for participants to solve problems, share resources and have discussions throughout the week.

Apply Now

Photos from Past Refineries

In the Meantime

MESH

Want to see what’s happening at thINC?

MESH is an open to the public event that exists to build creative collisions between Makers, Entrepreneurs, Students, & Hackers across upstate NY. Every MESH is built around a LIVE thINC Tank casual talk with a business owner who has already experienced the pathway through the ups and downs of pursuing their own venture. You get open Q&A and an environment that allows you to ask those hard questions without the pressure of selling yourself first. Casual real-world open discussion on what makes or breaks success.

What do you get out of it?

You get to experience the thINC space, MESH and connect with the existing thINC community, and acquire experiential insight on running a business from an entrepreneur that has walked the walk.

Workshops

Get Tactical.

Community stakeholder’s, co-worker’s, and incubated companies sometimes host their own workshops at the thINCubator. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or explore our programs tab to see what’s happening at thINCubator.

Also, here is access to the Upstate Venture Connect events calendar to see what might be happening regionally.

Interested in renting the space to host a valuable workshop for our entrepreneurs?

Use this application to see if it’s a fit.