Allen and Joel interview Tone Søndergaard, Director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. The hub's six-month accelerator program provides mentorship, industry connections, and resources to help startups scale. Tone shares insights from the first cohort's outcomes and discusses the global application process for cohort two. If you're interested in learning more, visit https://www.offshorewindnyc.com/.



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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxam. Starting a new business in the wind industry is particularly difficult. Uh, there are multiple challenges beyond creating a product that the industry needs or wants. Fundraising, staffing, finding an office, technology development, marketing, international sales, the list goes on.



Well, there is help on the way. The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, located in Brooklyn, New York, is a groundbreaking initiative launched by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with Ecuador, and supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The hub's mission is to accelerate the growth of the offshore wind industry by supporting startups developing cutting edge technologies, by providing access to mentorship, industry connections, and resources to scale up.



The hub aims to position New York City as a major player in the rapidly growing Offshore wind sector. Leading this ambitious initiative is Tone Sundegaard, uh, the director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. With a background deeply rooted in the Danish wind industry and expensive experience fostering clean tech collaboration between Denmark and the United States, Tone brings a wealth of expertise and passion to her role in shaping the future of offshore wind innovation in New York City and beyond.



Tona, welcome to the program.



Tone Søndergaard: Thank you so much.



Allen Hall: So there is a lot to talk about today, uh, because Hey, we know a lot of small businesses in wind that are trying to get established. We are one of them Uh, and and uh your offshore wind innovation hub Popped up on our radar screen recently, like, Oh, Hey, there's a lot going on there that we didn't know about.



And let's get some, get them on the podcast to talk about all the great activities that are happening there. But I want to first step back and talk about what are some of the problems with starting a small business in wind.



Tone Søndergaard: I think one of the reasons we really started this innovation hub and found that there was a need for an accelerator program and ecosystem development for the smaller businesses within offshore wind was partly twofold in a way.



The first reason really being that we found that smaller businesses, especially within offshore wind, were challenged by what we call information asymmetry, and it was really difficult for many of the smaller businesses who wanted to either move into offshore wind or pivot into offshore wind from other industries to figure out Precisely what is my value proposition?



Precisely when in the supply chain do I fit in? Um, and data in this industry tends to be fairly privileged and sort of like held by some of the really major corporations. Um, so that was really one of the problems that we wanted to try and solve with Innovation Hub was to try and give smaller players access to some of this infor...