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www.HartfordBusiness.com December 5, 2016 • Hartford Business Journal 3 From Central Connecticut's trusted business news source. It's the up-to-date information you need to do better business! Get local breaking business news daily! Sign up today at HartfordBusiness.com: Click on the 'SUBSCRIBE' button HBJToday and Innovate Hartford aims for 100 new startups in year one By John Stearns jstearns@HartfordBusiness.com S hana Schlossberg envisions her new venture in downtown Hartford's Stilts Building to be a hive of entrepreneur- ial and creative energy that will spin off new high-tech businesses, grow existing ones, fos- ter investments, launch connections, inspire youth, create jobs and fuel game-changing robotic and wearable technology innovations that could be manufactured here. "When an accelerator, incubator, eco- system is built in the middle of town, its purpose is for everyone," said Schlossberg, founder and CEO of Innovate Hartford, a co- working space that will also host seminars and other events to support innovation. Work is still underway on Innovate Hart- ford's 27,453-square-foot, two-floor space beginning on the mezzanine of the office tower at 20 Church St., but the group already occupies temporary co-working space on the 17th floor where companies can work until the permanent space is completed in Febru- ary. The permanent space will have desks for co-working, private offices, common areas with high tops and couches for lounging and networking, an area for games like Ping Pong, a meditation room, conference rooms and a robotics and wearables lab. Two com- panies are already in the temporary space, two more will enter before Jan. 1 and others are reserving the main area. Innovate Hartford is recruiting existing tech companies from inside and outside the U.S. and aims to have 100 of them within a year. Innovate Hartford, which is taking no public money itself, is serving as a con- duit to help other companies apply for state grants or other assistance to make the tran- sition to Connecticut easier. "How do you start an ecosystem? You can't say, 'OK, we'll sit around wait for people to come.' … You have to jumpstart it," Schloss- berg said of companies that become magnets for other companies, entrepreneurs, profes- sional-services providers and investors. Schlossberg, 35, who's been in tech her entire career and exudes confidence in Innovate Hartford's mission and its ability to help the region's economy, looks forward to joining the city's innovation space and says local investors are hungry for Con- necticut companies in which to invest. "I can name, 20, 30 and more of them who are living in this area, who have a lot of money and are spending it on startups in Silicon Valley, are investing in New York," she said. They would like more companies to choose from locally and are willing to invest in Innovate Hartford real estate to meet Connecticut companies they and oth- ers may want to invest in and which are attracted to the space, Schlossberg said. About $2.8 million is being spent on the Stilts space, roughly $1 million by the build- ing's New York owner, Shelbourne Global Solutions LLC, for which Schlossberg's broth- er, Benjamin, is a managing member, and the rest by investors split roughly evenly between those in Hartford, including Alan Lazowski, chairman, CEO and founder of Hartford's LAZ Parking, and outside of Hartford. Shel- bourne is not part of Innovate Hartford, but has negotiated a 20-year lease with it. With Innovate Hartford's model generating rent from existing tech companies, Schloss- berg envisions being able to offer a few free seats to some early stage startups with great ideas, giving them access to experts and men- tors in the building, connecting them to uni- versities and others who can help them. "Suddenly, I'm building the incubator that is self-sustaining because I'm not tak- ing any additional money from investors for that incubator that every other incubator has to," she said. "But in a true ecosystem, you need the base, the solid base of companies, which is why these 100 companies will be so impor- tant, to show these are 100 companies creat- ing jobs, creating revenue for the state, they're making Hartford better and bigger," she said. That's where the incubator comes in, gen- erating the next great idea or technology. She's intrigued by wearable and robotic technology, but is open to other technology incubation. Michael Cantor, chairman of Connecti- cut Innovations and co-managing partner of the Cantor Colburn intellectual property law firm, is impressed by Schlossberg. "I have now been working with her for quite a number of months and I've been at many, many meetings with her — she is for real," Cantor said. "She is putting her money where her mouth is." She's seen the ecosystem for entrepre- neurs and startups Connecticut has already created through programs like CTNext and those of the state Department of Economic and Community Development and wants to be part of it, he said. "It's very, very exciting and when she says she's going to bring a hundred companies here in the next year, I believe her," Cantor said, praising her contacts and connections with universities, governments and others in the innovation ecosystem. "She's doing it the right way, she's not looking to be an island," he said. "It's all about connectivity when you're talking about developing an ecosystem." Worldly ambitions Schlossberg, who lives in New York City and visits weekly, intends to move part of her own company, EZBZ, to the space, and even- tually spend about half her time in Hartford. Schlossberg,EZBZ's founder and CEO, creat- ed the technology platform in 2011 to connect small businesses in real time to consumers looking for their services. Consumers type in what they're looking for, EZBZ provides a list of providers who are available and their costs. It's up to the consumer to reach out to the provider they want. "The core of me is a social entrepre- neur," she said. "When I went into EZBZ, what drove me there was I really wanted to create a platform that's equal opportunity for small businesses," she said. "I have a lot of wearable ideas. EZBZ's artificial intelli- gence, it's natural next step is a robot walk- ing around your house taking note of what H B J P H O T O | J O H N S T E A R N S Shana Schlossberg Founder and CEO, Innovate Hartford Highest education: Master's in bioinformatics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, 2003. Executive insights: "The most important thing I teach [entrepreneurs] is the ability to adapt, the ability to not get married, if you will, to any one idea and understand that things change and be welcoming of that change. … A corporation can't move quickly and a startup can and that's why we can do great things and solve great problems, so adapt and be flexible." EXECUTIVE PROFILE Check out a video clip of Shana Schlossberg's interview at hartfordbusiness.com. Continued Shana Schlossberg, founder and CEO of Innovate Hartford, is seen on the 17th floor of the Stilts Building in downtown Hartford, where her organization has set up temporary co-working space while its permanent quarters at the mezzanine level gets built out.