Patrick Bosek talks with Lauren Washington—serial entrepreneur, community builder, and Director of the University at Buffalo’s Cultivator Program—about her amazing journey through multiple ventures to helping shape Buffalo’s startup ecosystem. Lauren shares how winning the first-ever 43North with her social listening startup “Keep Up” taught her hard lessons about platform risk and building on someone else’s APIs. From there, she talks through founding a community, Black Women Talk Tech, before pivoting back to commercial start-ups by launching Funder. Finally, Lauren explains how UB’s Cultivator accelerator deploys first checks and provides mentorship to help Western New York founders compete on the global stage.