The Urban Future Lab (UFL) is looking for smart technology-focused startups to compete in this year’s Urban Future Competition, offering $50,000 and membership into ACRE, a cleantech incubator. Applications are due on December 1st, and their open house is rescheduled from October 24th to November 8th.
Tagup co-founder Jon Garrity, a prior Competition winner, spoke about the positive impact it had on his business, saying, “ACRE and the Urban Future Competition provided us a meaningful prize award and the support needed to get our business off the ground at an early stage. The ACRE team was also instrumental in identifying a project opportunity with NYSERDA and Con Edison. The community and overall support is terrific.”
The competition has three focus tracks with each naming 3-5 finalists that will pitch their product or idea to a panel of investors and experts. The three tracks are Smart Mobility, which covers mobility-as-a-service, autonomous vehicles, and electric vehicles and their infrastructure, Smart City, which includes areas like analytics and big data, air quality and comfort, and real estate technology, and lastly Smart Grid, which deals with energy efficiency, energy blockchain, battery storage, and Distributed Energy Resources (DER).
The winning company must commit to one full-time employee at the ACRE incubator at the Urban Future Lab in Downtown Brooklyn. Prizes will be administered in two tranches during a minimum six-month incubation period, having milestones created by the ACRE staff and agreed upon by the awardee.
UFL is part of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, and the ACRE which is the longest running clean incubator program in NYC.
