The 43North Foundation’s mission is to drive a new era of growth in Buffalo through entrepreneurship and innovation.
The Foundation was excited earlier this year to debut a flagship initiative, Radial Ventures, a venture studio that will create scalable software startups rooted in Buffalo.
Buffalo has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 15 years regarding high-growth tech.
The venture studio’s goal is to take these positive signals and turn them into durable growth by creating more successful companies and big wins.
A new wave of cutting-edge startups rooted in Buffalo.
A world-class opportunity for emerging entrepreneurs to stay and build here.
But why a venture studio? The 43North Foundation is proud to join this emerging trend in economic development, building our own version of what works in other cities.
Click here to learn about Radial's first portfolio company, Makeoff.
A growing trend in economic development
The venture studio concept is largely defined by a preexisting team of product builders that take early ideas, bring them to market and spin them into separate companies.
When done right, it’s a more efficient (and less risky) way of gaining traction and attracting institutional capital.
Across the country, regions from Tulsa to Detroit to Boise are turning to venture studios as a new cornerstone for economic development. They are a contrast to traditional accelerators that rely on external founders. Studios create startups in-house - meaning more companies launched, higher survival rates, and stronger local ownership.
Data-backed playbook for success
According to the Global Startup Studio Network (GSSN), companies emerging from venture studios are 30% more likely to raise Series A funding and do so twice as fast as traditional startups. Even more striking: more than 80% of studio-born companies are still active after five years, compared to less than 10% of traditional startups. This higher “hit rate” compounds locally—each successful exit or scale-up reinvests talent, capital, and expertise back into the ecosystem.
Venture studios also help retain intellectual property and economic value within their home regions. By design, the studio structure anchors founders, engineers, and investors in the same geography—building local wealth rather than exporting innovation elsewhere.
As the Brookings Institution noted in its 2024 report on innovation clusters, “studio models are among the most effective tools for converting regional research and talent into sustainable, high-value job creation.”
A Smarter, Faster Path to Building Companies
“Unlike traditional incubators and accelerators that provide varying degrees of support to external startups, venture studios create companies from the ground up by developing ideas in-house and pairing them with founders to build businesses,” Matthew Burris wrote in his recent article Venture Studios: The Next Big Thing for Regional Growth, Innovation, and Resilience.
“This model has gained traction as a method to enhance local economic resilience, particularly in underserved areas where economic development initiatives focus on localized impact,” Burris continued. “By leveraging the expertise and resources of venture studios, regions can cultivate a robust startup ecosystem that not only drives innovation but also addresses specific community needs through mission-aligned entrepreneurship.”
Building Buffalo’s Flywheel
At full speed, Radial Ventures will inject high-quality deal flow into Buffalo’s startup economy. Its companies will solve hard problems in large markets with differentiated, cutting-edge products.
Radial companies will have access to some of the city’s brightest minds who have lived the creation-to-exit cycle. Radial CEO Dan Magnuszewski is the cofounder and former CTO of ACV Auctions; Radial CTO Mike Canzoneri is a successful entrepreneur, tech executive and product builder; and product/design VPs Nicholas Barone and Jonathan Gorczyca have spent their careers launching software products (most recently running HelmUX).
That’s a lot of firepower, and it doesn’t include Radial’s full-time AI and Engineering team, who work daily to support its companies from ideation to launch.
The Radial Edge
The Radial value proposition goes beyond the talent of its team. As an AI-native studio, it has built an automated tool that can analyze potential startup ideas—from problem scope to market size. The tool is essentially a “cheat code” for early due diligence, letting Radial quickly assess opportunities using the same frameworks institutional investors apply.
This data-driven approach, combined with hands-on execution, means Radial can validate more ideas faster—reducing both capital risk and time to market.
And finally, the 43North Foundation represents a powerful intersection of influence in Buffalo. That means its companies will have built-in advantages as they seek early customers, pilot programs, and follow-on investors—critical momentum for any startup ecosystem.
The Bigger Picture
The 43North is striving to support a new era of growth in Buffalo through entrepreneurship and innovation. High-growth companies are a proven economic catalyst—creating jobs that pay more, attract talent, and expand the tax base.
Buffalo has been home to a steady stream of successful startup companies over the past 20 years. Now it’s time to drive that initial validation to a new level—creating more wins, retaining more value locally, and watching the flywheel of innovation spin even faster.
As the data shows, venture studios aren’t just a better way to build companies—they’re one of the smartest strategies for building economies.
.png)
