Unique career fair matches talent with Happy Valley’s thriving startups
Do you want to find qualified candidates, connect with Happy Valley’s strong entrepreneurial network or build your brand with talent-seeking, like-minded companies? Then you don’t want to miss the Small Business and Startup Career Fair happening during Penn State’s Startup Week. You can register your company to find talent. The cost is only $50 per booth. The event […]
$50,000 prize could turn the next Big Idea into reality
This spring, Ben Franklin Technology Partners is looking for innovators with big ideas in Happy Valley, Clarion, Clearfield, and Jefferson Counties — and the winner takes home $50,000. “The Big Idea contest is a great way for entrepreneurs to get involved with Happy Valley’s entrepreneur ecosystem,” says Annie Hughes, who is the project’s organizer as […]
Tolstoy, tech and why Happy Valley is the #1 place for startups today
Five questions with Ben Franklin’s John Sider For the last 8 years, John Sider has been an innovation matchmaker, pairing growing companies with capital to get them to the next level (he also led Ben Franklin’s effort in creating the $11 million venture capital fund 1855 Capital based in State College). This spring, he’s […]
See a need, fill a need: BAI Group’s journey from waste management consulting to leading solar energy advancement
Between 2020 and 2021, State College-based BAI Group’s revenue from its solar energy segment grew by ten times, and President Jim Echard projects this same rapid and significant growth over the next five years. The local company, which got its start in waste management, is a major player in the greening of the Mid-Atlantic energy […]
5 questions with a Happy Valley CEO: Juan Mario Gomez with Xact Metal
Sometimes in business, it’s all about how the stars align. Xact Metal’s CEO Juan Mario Gomez spent decades working as an executive with GE before leaving to pursue a more entrepreneurial environment. A seemingly kismet meeting started what’s now a fast-growing company. After leaving GE, Gomez connected with Invent Penn State and the Happy Valley […]
The road to redemption runs through Tyrone
How failure, gumption and the power of friendship created one of the biggest European motorsport franchises on the East Coast When Josh Nolten and Dave Myers became friends at Park Forest Junior High, mainly because their last names and thus their lockers were so dang close together, they never imagined that one day they’d be […]
Online Shopping Attracts New Customers to Local Farm Markets
A visit to any farmers market is, by its very nature, social. The mingling with other shoppers. The chit-chatting with the vendors. You get to know your neighbors and the folks who grow your food on a deeper level. So what happens when the “social” part of just about everything is stripped away and the […]
Penn State Entrepreneurialism By the Numbers
Penn State started out as a land-grant school to provide an ag education to children of farmers and working families all over Pennsylvania. It’s never lost sight of entrepreneurial-minded Pennsylvanians, people who put their own sweat equity into building businesses from the ground up. Over the last decade, that focus on entrepreneurialism has deepened as […]
Hometown Turnaround: Entrepreneur Offers Free Lewistown Storefront
The Facebook post read like the opening of a good book: “I will be offering a free storefront for 12 months. Looking for something unique that is proven to be successful to downtown Lewistown to make it a walking town. Submit an actual business plan, not just a vision.” But this wasn’t fiction; it was […]
