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News & Updates - Monday, October 31, 2005

Boom, Bust, Boom in Buffalo

How do you survive a long, cold dot.com winter? Locate in Buffalo where you can knuckle down with low overhead and loyal employees. If it was based in Silicon Valley, New York or Boston, we suspect that Buffalo-based Synacor would have no chance of survival given its tumultuous fortunes. Four years ago, the company downsized from a high of 100 employees in a 27K square-foot office suite to a low of 35 employees in 2004 in a 10K sq. foot office. The company is now up to 71 employees.

Synacor's roots date way back to 1998 when the company was founded as Chek.com by three University at Buffalo graduates, offering branded e-mail. In 2001, it merged with MyPersonal.com near San Francisco which included $10M in venture capital and a biz plan rewrite.

Today, the company's software platform product, Portelus, is sold to Internet service providers of all stripes - it provides end-users with one sign-in for all premium services and applications.

The company's CEO said the company had 2004 revenues of "tens of millions," a fivefold increase over the previous year, and is profitable.

Read - This time, tech firm resizing upward (Buffalo Business First)