UPDATED: Nov. 6, 2017 at 3:50 p.m.

A Syracuse University staff member, earlier this month, won a $15,000 prize at an international entrepreneurial competition for his design of a portable charging station for electric vehicles.

Josh Aviv, co-founder and CEO of SparkCharge, won first place at the Blackstone/Techstars venture pitch competition in New York City on Oct. 18.

Aviv competed in a “pitchfest,” winning a $15,000 prize and a trip to Techstars Foundercon in Oakland, California, for his new product called SparkCharge.

“Essentially, an electric vehicle owner can be sitting in the middle of a corn field and take the charger from out the trunk of his car, plug it in and begin charging his vehicle right there on the spot,” Aviv said.

The pitch competition started at the end of a two-day Blackstone/Techstars boot camp that involved training, mentorship and networking sessions. Forty collegiate ventures, selected from the 20 Blackstone LaunchPads across the United States and Ireland, participated in the camp.

Among the ventures, seven finalists were chosen to participate in the final pitchfest.

SparkCharge’s team consisted of five people, including engineers, scientists and marketers. In assembling his team, Aviv made use of the Syracuse Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering, or CASE.

Angelo “AJ” Damiano, a junior studying marketing management at SU, also attended the training camp. Damiano is the founder of PowerSpike, a marketing and analytics platform for the video game live-streaming platform Twitch.tv.

“We take the top content creators on Twitch.tv, and we help connect them with brands and advertisers for paid promotions and sponsored content,” Damiano said.

Both Damiano and Aviv said they made full use of Bird Library’s Blackstone LaunchPad in developing their businesses. SU’s LaunchPad, funded by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, is an entrepreneurship resource center that can be utilized by students, staff, faculty and alumni.

“Blackstone, when they were hosting this event, they put the challenge to the 20 LaunchPads: ‘Bring your most investment-ready programs to the training camp,’” said Braden Croy, program manager at SU’s LaunchPad. “Based on our work with the companies, we identified the two top companies that we thought were investment ready.”

Aviv, who graduated in May with a master’s degree in information management, is the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. He said his job involves helping student entrepreneurs and guiding them through the pitch process.

SparkCharge is also located in a research lab at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. Aviv said his company will start to open up investment rounds to raise funds and then head into manufacturing.

Aviv said SparkCharge plans to start manufacturing in upstate New York, eventually bringing that work to Syracuse.

“Going from being a student venture that started in Syracuse to a full-blown company that is hiring people in the community, we look forward to doing that,” Aviv said.

Published on October 31, 2017 at 8:47 pm