Tech startups need money. Accelerate Long Island is helping with grants to early-stage companies.

Bootstrapping entrepreneurs — people with a great idea and determination but little to no outside funding — can apply for money from Accelerate Long Island before the end of the year to defray startup costs.

Accelerate Long Island, a nonprofit group of academics and businesses that helps tech startups, has $130,000 to award through the Innovation Hot Spot program this year. To date, it has approved eight  applications with five more pending. The money is available through a $1.25 million, five-year grant from Empire State Development, the state's primary business aid agency. About $120,000 is spent on networking and marketing each year.

The money available to local tech startups is for professional services like legal, accounting, and  human resources and marketing. Accelerate Long Island will reimburse startups one-third of the cost of these services.

“People who are bootstrapping their way in their garage with no funding yet may be students like me,” said Arielle Gabalski, 26, founder and partner of CMS BioTechnologies.

Gabalski is finishing her PhD in molecular medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. CMS BioTechnologies, one of the eight companies approved for funding so far, is developing technology to reduce side effects of medication.

Gabalski said Accelerate also assists with networking events where she was able to meet fellow entrepreneurs and service providers. “Everything in this business functions on momentum,” she said. “If you can give a little bit of momentum, it helps. The early entrepreneurial services available through Accelerate and Hofstra are really vital.”   

Michael Nizich,  director of the New York Institute of Technology at Old Westbury’s Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation Center, said high costs mean Long Island as a region has to help startups. “Some of these high-end services, especially with tech companies, are very expensive,” Nizich said. “For a lot of startups, these services are almost out of reach.”

Accelerate’s professional services funding helps improve the survival rate of early-stage tech startups, Nizich said. Networking and guidance provided by several groups, including Accelerate and the Business Incubator Association of New York State, make it more likely for an entrepreneur to succeed.

“We have a really robust incubation program on Long Island,” Nizich said. “All these different people play a role in startups, and to put them all in one room helps.”

Nurturing early-stage startups takes a village, with many organizations, businesses and universities involved, said Stacey Sikes, chair of the Accelerate board and vice president of government affairs and communications for the Long Island Association business group.

“Our incubator network on Long Island supports students, faculty and community entrepreneurs, and gives them the mentorship that they need to have the skills to start and grow a company,” Sikes said. “That’s where the networking events come in. Face-to-face interaction is important to build the ecosystem on Long Island.”

To further help startups, Accelerate streamlined the application on its website.

Dan Lloyd, program director for Accelerate, said by providing networking events and funding for professional services, the group is creating a true tech startup ecosystem on Long Island.

“This helps us build a real startup community,” Lloyd said. “We want to create a scene here. There are some really cool founders on Long Island.”

The funding through Accelerate is available to tech startups less than 5 years old that are not currently profitable and haven’t raised more than $1 million in equity. Lloyd said the money is awarded in blocks of up to $10,000.

Business and government leaders have envisioned making Long Island a hub for startup technology companies for decades. While that goal has remained elusive, “there is no shortage of tech companies” in the region, Nizich said.

“Long Island is really bustling," he said, adding that incubator groups hope to create "awareness — making the right folks in government and industry in the country know that Long Island is really a great place to work and start a business.”

To apply, visit AccelerateLI.org/hot-spot/#apply.

— Special to Newsday