Rev: Ithaca Startup Works has incubated more than 117 businesses and its member companies have created 849 new jobs, raised $205 million in capital and generated over $123 million in revenue, according to data released to mark the downtown business incubator’s 10-year anniversary.

Administered by Cornell’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement, a division of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, Rev helps startups launch and grow with dedicated workspace, personalized mentorship and entrepreneurial education opportunities.

“Rev was created with the goal of not just being a place for entrepreneurs to work but one where Rev is a home for area entrepreneurship,” Rev director Ken Rother said. “A house has walls, a roof, stuff and people inside while a home has a spirit, a vibe and a feeling that is evident to everyone who sets foot in Rev.”

Rev had six member companies when then-President David Skorton established it with Ithaca College and Tompkins Cortland Community College in 2014. 

“Over the last 10 years, Rev member companies originating from Cornell as well as from the community at large have changed the landscape for local entrepreneurship by making Ithaca their home and adding jobs to the local economy,” Rother said. “When a town gets a company of 30 or 40 people, that’s a huge deal. It's important to us that Ithaca is successful.”

Ithaca, a city of 30,000 residents, ranks among the top startup ecosystems in the country.

As Ithaca’s only off-campus incubator, Rev provides a launchpad for all entrepreneurs, from community members with business ideas to researchers commercializing their lab innovations to Cornellians looking to start businesses in the area.

“Rev has built a place where the generations that come after us see Ithaca and this community as a place to found and scale a company,” said Andrea Ippolito ’06, M.Eng ’07, founder of the baby-feeding startup SimpliFed and senior lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering.

Beyond its incubator services, Rev’s flagship offering is its three free Hardware Accelerator programs, which support entrepreneurs through developing, scaling and launching physical product startups.

Since launching its first hardware program in 2015, Rev has worked with 125 hardware companies. With Rev’s help, Cornell spinouts including Capro-X, a startup upcycling dairy waste, and Heat Inverse, a clean cooling technology startup, have transformed their technologies into scalable products. Both companies are still based in Ithaca, adding jobs to the local economy, attracting capital to the area and building the local startup community.

“The most rewarding part of my time here at Rev has been getting to know the community,” Ippolito said. “I’ve been able to find people who have guided and mentored me, given me strategic directions, reviewed my investor decks and my investor updates, given me advice on data platforms and introduced me to customers. That is so rare to find a community that has your back and is willing to push you forward.”

Katharine Downey is a marketing communications coordinator for the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.