Blackstone LaunchPad Grand Opening

Good afternoon!

Thank you all for joining us as we celebrate the grand opening of this truly exciting educational resource, the Blackstone LaunchPad at UB.

UB has a vibrant culture of student entrepreneurship—not only in fields like management and engineering, but across the disciplines. And there has never been a more exciting time to be a student entrepreneur at UB.

Our Buffalo Niagara region is experiencing tremendous entrepreneurial growth right now as more and more global businesses are locating in our region and more start-up ventures are taking hold here. UB is proud to play a big part in the entrepreneurial culture that is thriving in Western New York—from our faculty innovators and technology incubators, to our partnerships with business and industry. And, of course, our students are a big part of this entrepreneurial culture as well.

We are nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit taking hold at UB and in our city. We are especially focused on providing more avenues to connect our students to this entrepreneurial ecosystem, and all the opportunities and experiences that come with it. We have implemented a number of very successful initiatives to provide our student entrepreneurs with hands-on experience, mentorship, and support for their ventures, including:

• UB’s Entrepreneurship Academy,
• the Panasci and Elevator Pitch Competitions,
• e-Bootcamp,
• and Buffalo Student Sandbox.

The Blackstone LaunchPad program will complement and enhance these efforts in a very exciting way.

We are delighted to provide our students—tomorrow’s leaders of business and industry—with this innovative resource. And we can’t wait to see their great ideas come to life as they start their own ventures and launch the next generation of business enterprises in Buffalo and around the world.