Recognizing the critical need for new cybersecurity concerns, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, in cooperation with Columbia University, Cornell Tech, the City University of New York, and New York University launched Cyber NYC Inventors to Founders (I2F) in the Summer of 2019. I2F is an early stage startup accelerator and talent network for cybersecurity and data privacy startups emerging from academia. The program offers promising initiatives the potential to become scalable startup ventures by providing capital, and access to leading corporate CISOs, and mentors. At the end of the 12-week “accelerator” program, a subset of the companies will receive additional investment capital.

The initial cohort of accelerator teams began their journey in April. The 10 teams selected include:

• Two female-led ventures
• Nine teams with a person of color as a founding member
• Four faculty-affiliated startups that have raised millions of dollars in federal and private grant funding, including a Facebook Secure the Internet Grant
• Graduates of Plug and Play and Techstars accelerators and Fullstack Academy

One of the selected teams is BrainCeek, a work simulation platform that helps students and job-seekers who, because of their social class, may not have been fully aware of the range of opportunities open to them. The cofounder of BrainCeek, Thomas Liu, completed his bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics at NYU.

If you are working on a commercially-viable research project, or have already launched an early-stage startup, please consider applying for the next cohort of the accelerator program.  The program is open to NYU student, faculty members and alumni. 

Students at Columbia, Barnard, NYU, Cornell Tech or CUNY who are not currently involved in a start-up project can become part of the initiative by applying to become a Cyber NYC Student Fellow. Students will work 10 hours-a-week with our accelerator and startup portfolio doing investor due diligence, operations, event management, and everything in between. Send an email to  daniel.goetzel@columbia.edu to apply.