By GREGORY ZELLER //
In a world where business-plan competitions are a dime a dozen, an Albertson-based 501(c)3 with a seven-decade legacy is breaking new pitch-a-thon ground.
It’s not the size of this contest that makes it unique, or its prizes, or even its dual focus on both established businesses and pre-launch startups.
Instead, the Founders With Disabilities PitchFest Competition carves a niche by focusing on the disabled – an eager, talented and, according to The Viscardi Center, grossly underserved subset of the American entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Founded in 1952 by American disability rights advocate Henry Viscardi Jr., who advised eight presidents on integrating the physically disabled into the U.S. workforce (and wore prosthetic legs himself), The Viscardi Center is already a unique addition to the Long Island innovation economy.
Its first-ever PitchFest is actually the final act of the first cohort to complete business-formation programming offered by Viscardi’s National Center for Disability Entrepreneurship, which launched in November 2019 to promote the business savvy and self-confidence people with disabilities need to launch their own enterprises.
Victoria Rodriguez Minowitz: Palpable excitement.
“This brings to a close the year-long skill-acquisition phase,” noted NCDE Managing Executive Director Victoria Rodriguez Minowitz. “They are now able to pitch their business ideas to the public.”
Featuring business founders from eight different states, the virtual competition – scheduled to be livestreamed from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m. Nov. 19 – puts $10,000 in equity-free cash grants and another $10,000 in mentoring services on the line, all donated by a host of generous program sponsors, including the Hofstra University Center for Entrepreneurship.
The judges include an impressive cross-section of early-stage VCs, marketing professionals and serial entrepreneurs, including Stony Brook University Small Business Development Center Technology Entrepreneur-in-Residence Michael Chiang and several members of the NCDE’s Advisory Council.
The center’s first cohort, whittled down after a national application process, is comprised of nine solopreneurs and three entrepreneurial teams, with all contestants having earned at least a bachelor’s degree. They’ve also overcome “a variety of disabilities,” according to Minowitz, and collectively represent early-stage enterprises at different stages of the business-formation process.
“Half the cohort has businesses established already, and were looking for assistance in expanding them substantially,” Minowitz told Innovate LI. “The other half are in the ideation stage.”
The $20,000 prize package is not the largest pitch-a-thon pot on Long Island, but the PitchFest – which was scheduled to coincide with November’s National Entrepreneurship Month – is not only about funding the competition winners, according to The Viscardi Center President and CEO John Kemp.
It’s more about empowering these and other innovative self-starters to achieve self-employment success, the president noted.
“If less than 10 percent of all venture-capital deals go to women, people of color and LGBTQ founders, imagine how little flows to our nation’s 61 million people with disabilities,” Kemp, also chairman of the NCDE, said in a statement. “Let’s build the first accessible ecosystem, one entrepreneur with disabilities at a time.”
That’s precisely what’s happening with the Nov. 19 PitchFest, according to Minowitz, who called the competition “an extension of The Viscardi Center’s 68-year mission.”
“The excitement is palpable for both the NCDE and the cohort themselves,” the managing exec said. “We have so many amazing people who have supported the disability-entrepreneurship movement – our Advisory Council and our mentors and partners, who have really come together to help this movement locally, regionally and nationally.”
