Incubation Process: Idea to Product Launch
The Praxis Center is an environment that helps your startup every day by surrounding you with people who will mentor, inspire, and challenge you. From a large pool of mentors, find your top 3-5 mentors to help you with product development, market fit, and who will also provide valuable introductions to help grow your company — fast. Go deeper with your lead mentors, gain traction and hit your milestones – whether that’s a prototype, building out the next phase of your product, finding your first customer or hitting $50M in revenue. Determine your fundraising strategy and prepare to meet with investors. Learn how to communicate your vision and prepare to meet with investors, partners and other key stakeholders who can help shape your future. We follow a four step process that starts with just an idea and supports your journey all the way to independent operation at an off-campus facility.
Mission Statement
The three part mission of the Praxis Center is to:
- Foster the development of early-stage Cornell engineering, digital and physical science startups
- Provide a return on investments of time and effort for Cornell faculty / staff / employee inventors
- Increase employment opportunities and economic development in New York State
Operating Principles
The Praxis Center is committed to operate in a manner that is:
- Transparent and open with respect to program organization and selection methodology
- In the best interest of the University
- Protective of each individual clients’ privacy and intellectual property
- Collaborative with and complementary to other University support resources
- Consistent with all University’s policies and established practices
- A mutually respectful partnership with our clients
Goals
The Center’s goals are to:
- Leverage the broad expertise of the Research Division through organizational alignment
- Provide clear contact points between investors, alumni, inventors, advisors and strategic partners
- Reduce the duplication of effort and increase the value of education, outreach, and business planning
- Offer co-location and easy access to the University’s excellent research and development resources
- Make available entrepreneurial advisory, educational, collaboration, and business planning opportunities elsewhere within the wider Cornell community
Charter
Download the Praxis Center-Organizational Charter Final_Executed