Accelerate Long Island

Accelerate Long Island is a collaboration among Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Hofstra University, the North Shore, Feinstein Institute, Stony Brook University, and Long Island’s business community led by the Long Island Association, and is dedicated to commercializing research. Accelerate Long Island offers funding, mentoring, events and a network of technology-focused entrepreneurs to support the development of early-stage start-up technology companies.

Accelerate Long Island was created in 2011 to foster the development of an innovation-based economy on Long Island.

The Accelerate Long Island Seed Fund was established by a $500,000 grant from New York State Empire State Development awarded by the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council and made grants to ten portfolio companies in the biotech and energy sectors. Those grants were matched by the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund (LIETF), which includes Topspin Partners and Jove Equity Partners. The Accelerate Long Island Seed Fund was designed as very early stage funding for companies that are commercializing technologies. This fund is now closed.

The Long Island BioMentor Initiative (LIBMI) was developed in an alliance with MIT’s successful Venture Mentor Service and is led by a partnership between the Center for Biotechnology and Accelerate Long Island. LIBMI brings highly qualified volunteer mentors together with motivated, early-stage bio-entrepreneurs to provide actionable guidance and support as they advance their business strategy.

Accelerate Long Island has made 6 investments. Accelerate Long Island has raised a total of $500K in a single venture fund, Accelerate Long Island Seed Fund. This fund was announced on Sep 17, 2012, and raised a total of $500K.

Long Island’s academic and research institutions make approximately $1.2 billion in annual research funding. Accelerate Long Island commercializes that research into start-up companies in three industry clusters: Information Technology, Biotech/life sciences, and Energy.

Accelerate Long Island has three broad initiatives:

• Accelerate Funding, which includes a $500,000 seed fund for early-stage companies and is matched by $750,000 from the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund.

• Accelerate Assist, which builds teams of mentors, professional services and MBA students around start-up companies.

• Accelerate Ecosystem, which works to develop Long Island’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.