Western New York had great startup community organizers. They were running events out of personal bank accounts, buying pizza on personal credit cards, and hoping nothing went wrong legally. When organizers burned out or moved on, the events disappeared with them.
The roots of today's WNY startup community go back to 2010 — Tuesday morning coffee meetups, a Google Group called the Buffalo Open Coffee Club, a string of Unconferences and Startup Scramble mini-conferences. Clark and Jordan were talking about building a permanent institutional home for all of it as early as 2014. When Techstars brought its Startup Ecosystem Development Program to Buffalo in 2019, it was building on a community that was already there.
BootSector was founded in 2021 to fix that. One 501(c)(3) umbrella — insurance, banking, fiscal sponsorship, and continuity — so organizers can focus on the founders, not the forms.
Corporate sponsors write one annual check to BootSector. We deploy it as grants to organizers across WNY — one approval cycle instead of dozens. Every dollar has a receipt. $751k+ deployed since launch.
Each powered group keeps its own brand, its own organizers, and its own community. BootSector provides the legal entity, insurance, banking, and successor-in-trust if life changes. The event outlasts the organizer.
Jordan is an attorney at Mattel/Fisher-Price and has been building the legal and operational backbone of BootSector since day one. He built the WNY Startup Community Slack from the ground up and keeps the lights on.
Clark has been building the WNY startup community since his time at Doolli in 2013. He founded Heads Up Display Inc and served as Program Director for Techstars Ecosystem Development for Buffalo. He currently resides in Austin, TX and continuously builds cool things with cool people.
Jack co-founded ACV Auctions, Buffalo's most successful venture-backed startup. He's been reinvesting in the WNY ecosystem ever since — as an angel, advisor, and BootSector board member.
Megan is deeply embedded in the WNY startup community and brings operational rigor to everything from event logistics to partner coordination.