Eligibility
The Grow-NY competition is for startups with growth potential in food and agriculture.
To be eligible, an applicant must be an established business entity in the food and agriculture space that meets New York State’s criteria for being “in the formative stage”, which is two or more of the following criteria:
- Less than seven years from date of formal organization
- Has its first product or service in testing or pilot production
- Pre-revenue or early revenue
- Has a leadership team and investors working toward commercialization and profitability
If the business is a spin-off from an existing business that does not meet the above criteria, the new entity must be pursuing a substantially new technology or business model.
The Competition is limited to applicants that are early-stage companies in the Food and Agriculture Field. As used inthese Terms and Conditions, the term “Food and Agriculture Field” is defined as follows:
- Physical products, hardware technologies, software technologies, services, or processes that relate to orimpact products that are derived from cultivating plants or enhance human life, such as:
- Food, including but not limited to fruits, vegetables, grains and cereal crops, meats and dairy products, honey and farmed fish, packaged and prepared food products for distribution;
- Fuels, including but not limited to ethanol, produced from corn, sugarcane, or sorghum, and agricultural byproducts like straw sugarcane
- Fibers, including but not limited to fiber crops such as cotton, wool, silk, hemp, flax and bamboo;
- Raw materials, including but not limited to livestock feed; and
- Processes or systems that improve the development, growth, production, distribution, delivery, or processing of the
The following businesses are not eligible for the Competition: investment vehicles that invest in the securities of other entities, residential real property and retail businesses, sports venues, gaming and gambling businesses, places of overnight accommodation, entertainment-related establishments, and such other types of business as the University’s Grow-NY Administration Team (the “Administrator”) may reasonably determine from time to time to be inconsistent with the purposes of the Competition. For this purpose, “retail business” means a business that is primarily engaged in making retail sales of goods or services to customers who personally visit such facilities to obtain goods or services. In addition, generally excluded are the following: buy- outs, roll-ups, real estate syndications, tax shelters, and franchise-based outlets. Also excluded areany businesses that do not fit within the definition of “Food and Agriculture Field” above.
Eligibility Requirements for Industrial Hemp Related Businesses:
To be eligible for the Competition, businesses engaged in growing, processing, producing, distributing or selling industrial hemp (or products derived from industrial hemp) must (1) demonstrate appropriate New York State licenses or be currently authorized Research Partners with the Department of Agriculture and Markets, and (2) not manufacture, distribute or sell industrial hemp based products (including but not limited to unapproved drugs, cosmetics, foods, and products marketed as dietary supplements) in violation of federal Food and Drug Administration regulations or other state or federal laws and regulations.
