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Syracuse accelerator begins filling out roster for 2013

The StartFast Venture Accelerator, which began last year in Syracuse, has begun gearing up for its encore session.

The program announced its first participant for 2013, a local advertising startup called Glyphr. The company was formed by a pair of Syracuse natives, Devin Daly and Michael Quigley last May.

Glyphr is a mobile application that allows users to take a picture of an ad they see in a magazine and have an interactive experience with it using something called augmented reality, or AR.

In StartFast's first year, venture capitalists Chuck Stormon and Nasir Ali took on nine companies and housed them in a downtown Syracuse office building for 100 days. Participants came from as far away as Israel. The accelerator is meant to give fledgling startups some seed capital and access to training and mentors.

The rest of the participants for this year - they expect to take about 10 again - will be selected in the coming months. The program will again run over the summer.

StartFast also recently announced some more funding available to this year's participants. Sand Oak Capital Partners, a Florida-based venture capital fund, is putting up $250,000 worth of post-accelerator capital for the teams.

WRVO/Central New York reporter for the Innovation Trail
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