Building got easier.
Growing revenue has not.
We help B2B companies in WNY turn products into revenue.
Human coaching.
AI-Powered execution.
Work directly with an expert coach on the real sales decisions that determine whether your company grows: who to pursue, how to earn meetings, how to run better sales conversations, and how to turn pipeline into revenue.
AI accelerates the work around that coaching – from buyer research and messaging to meeting prep, follow-up, and pipeline discipline.
The result is a practical sales system that helps you learn faster, move faster, and grow revenue repeatably.
“The Revenue Accelerator at Golisano Institute will be unique nationally and should grow the venture capital input in Western New York.”
– Tom Golisano, Founder of Paychex and philanthropist
“GrowthX helped sayhii reset and refocus our go-to-market strategy, resulting in a 15x increase in opportunity size and a total qualified pipeline of over $2.7M!”
– Amy Gurske, sayhii
“Working with GrowthX has been a game-changer for our business! We generated over $250,000 in revenue over the 16 weeks. If you’re serious about building a high growth, capital-efficient sales engine, I can’t recommend GrowthX highly enough!”
– Patrick Lawler, Cognivue
Program Details
Built for WNY founders ready to sell.
- Dedicated 1:1 coaching
- Small-group coaching
- Cohort masterclasses
- AI-powered sales enablement
- $3,500 per company
- Equity-free
- 16-week virtual program
- Next Cohort: Sept 28, 2026
See what happens inside the program.
Download the Program Guide for a clear breakdown of the 16-week experience: what your team will work on, how coaching is structured, how AI-powered enablement fits in, and what you should expect to accomplish.
Revenue Accelerated
Raise Capital With Confidence
Sales Systems That Investors Notice
AI made building easier. Investors know that. What they need to understand is whether you can find customers, close deals, and grow repeatably.
GrowthX helps you build the GTM evidence investors care about: clearer buyer focus, stronger messaging, better pipeline discipline, more credible forecasts, and a sharper story about how capital will accelerate revenue growth.
“43North is proud to partner with GrowthX to help our high-growth B2B companies validate their go-to-market strategies. Their hands-on approach and deep commitment to founder success are truly first-class. I’ve seen the revenue results firsthand—their systematic methodology and expert coaching deliver real outcomes. I want every founder to have the opportunity to experience what they offer.”
– Colleen Heidinger, 43North
Who's Investing?
If this sounds familiar,
GrowthX was built for you
You have a product, but sales still feels inconsistent.
You’re working hard to create interest, but that interest is not turning into enough meetings.
You’re getting some meetings, but not enough qualified next steps.
Your pipeline has activity, but not enough clarity.
GrowthX helps you do the work to change that: earn more of the right meetings, turn more of those meetings into qualified opportunities, manage your pipeline with greater discipline, and build a sales motion that becomes more fluid, more focused, and more repeatable over time.
Important Dates
Sept 21, 2026
Cohort Selection Closed
Rolling review process with limited spots available
Sept 28, 2026
Program Launch
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
Hear from our founders.
“Joining the GrowthX program was a game-changer for our business! During the 16-week program, we signed 6 new customers representing hundreds of thousands in ARR with $1Ms in contracted revenue as we expend, and built a pipeline of over 20 additional contracts. If you’re a WNY founder looking to accelerate revenue and create a repeatable GTM motion, GrowthX is the fastest way to get there!”
– Jon DeWald, HELIX Intel
“Since starting The Revenue Accelerator at Golisano Institute, our annual revenue as grown by over 33%. Every early-stage company needs GrowthX!”
– Rodney Reisdorf, Verivend (acquired by iAltA)
FAQ
All of your questions answered
No. While we sometime use the term “accelerator” to describe portions of our work, we are structurally and operationally distinct from traditional startup accelerators.
We operate a professionally developed sales curriculum specifically focused on B2B go-to-market execution. Rather than relying primarily on ad hoc mentorship models, we deliver structured, execution-focused sales coaching led by expert sales professionals who are assigned specifically to work directly alongside founding teams throughout the 16-week program.
The core of the GrowthX experience is 1:1 coaching. We run the program in cohorts because outcomes improve when founders also work in small pods. This is because founders often learn most when they are listening to someone else work through a challenge.
When a founder is deep inside their own company, they are an expert in the facts, but that expertise can make it easy to miss important details, skip over assumptions, or avoid asking the question that feels too obvious. In a pod, founders can see patterns more clearly because they are not emotionally attached to every fact.
They notice what others miss. They ask the “basic” question that unlocks the real issue. And when one founder has an aha moment, others often recognize the same pattern in their own business. That shared learning is not a substitute for individual coaching. It makes the individual coaching sharper, richer, and more useful.
The program is mostly virtual, so founders can participate without relocating or disrupting the day-to-day work of building their companies.
That said, this is a Golisano Institute program, and the cohort comes together a few times in person for workshops at both the Buffalo and Rochester campuses.
The in-person sessions create opportunities for founders to interact with Golisano Institute students who will be specifically trained to support participating companies. The goal is for those students to become a force multiplier for each company’s go-to-market work throughout the program.
Every masterclass is recorded and available on-demand via the GrowthX platform immediately after the session. Founders receive access to both the video and the transcript, so they can revisit the content and use the transcript with their own LLMs to support the work they are doing in the program.
Coaching sessions are also recorded, with privacy carefully respected. Recordings and transcripts from 1:1 coaching sessions are shared only with that company.
Small-group coaching sessions are recorded as well, and those videos and transcripts are shared only with the participating teams in that group.
Fit is less about your company’s age, stage, or funding status and more about whether you already have a repeatable sales motion.
GrowthX is built for founders who have something to sell, and need help turning sales work into a more focused, repeatable path to revenue growth.
GrowthX is especially useful when you are asking questions like:
- Are we pursuing the right buyers?
- Is our messaging earning enough attention?
- Why aren’t we converting more outbound to meetings and/or more meetings to sales?
- Is our pipeline disciplined enough to support growth?
- Can we make revenue more repeatable?
You’re a good fit if you’re trying to move from scattered sales activity to repeatable revenue.
You’re not a good fit if you just want more leads, want GrowthX to sell for you, or you’re just looking for help with your investor deck and investor intros.
AI is a powerful accelerator, but it is not a replacement for sales judgment.
Most large language models were trained on broad internet content, not on a coherent profession of early-stage B2B sales. That is why they often produce polished but generic sales output: better-sounding emails, longer target lists, and more activity that still misses the real buyer, the real urgency, and the real reason someone would take a meeting now.
GrowthX helps you use AI differently.
Throughout the program, you get access to a curated library of proprietary sales-stage-specific system prompts designed around the GrowthX methodology. You can use them with your LLM of choice to support the work you’re already doing in the program.
That means your AI support is aligned with the coaching you receive from your GrowthX coach. The AI helps you move faster. Your coach helps you make better decisions.
We are also developing our own AI product platform, which we expect to launch in the near future.
Yes. One of the unique strengths of this program is the opportunity for participating companies to work with Golisano Institute students who are specifically trained to support go-to-market work.
Through the GrowthX Studio Foundations program, we create an organized and thoughtful way for founders and students to engage throughout the cohort. Students may be available for project-based work, internships, and, where there is a strong fit, full-time opportunities.
The goal is to give companies access to trained student talent that can become a force multiplier for their go-to-market efforts, while giving students meaningful exposure to real companies, real revenue challenges, and practical startup experiences.
Yes, it’s highly personalized, but not in the way most programs claim.
Most “customization” means light-touch advice layered on top of a fixed curriculum. That tends to break down for B2B sales because the real work is messy, situational, and happens inside live deals. Here’s how ours actually works:
1) 1:1 coaching is the core. Each company is paired with a dedicated sales coach. That’s where the real personalization happens, in the context of your actual pipeline, your deals, your buyers, your constraints. Not hypotheticals.
2) Your live deals drive the work. We’re not asking you to step out of your business to learn. You bring real conversations, stuck deals, pricing decisions, messaging challenges, and we work them in real time. The output is forward motion in your pipeline, not just insight.
3) The “curriculum” is a forcing function, not a script. We do have a structured progression because early-stage B2B sales problems are more similar than founders think. But it’s applied differently depending on your stage, motion, and market. A pre-revenue founder and a $3M ARR founder will both work on pipeline, but in very different ways.
4) Small group pods create additional signal. You get pattern recognition and pressure-testing of your thinking without the echo chamber of your own market.
Where it’s not personalized (by design): We don’t customize around avoiding the hard parts of founder-led sales. If you’re looking to outsource or shortcut the work of building a repeatable motion, we’re not a good fit.
You should plan on 3 to 5 hours per week for the program itself. That includes roughly 1 to 2 hours of scheduled coaching sessions, plus structured work connected to the GrowthX experience.
The larger commitment is the actual work of sales. Founders see real revenue results by applying the work in the market: researching buyers, testing messaging, earning meetings, running sales conversations, following up, and managing pipeline. That part is harder to quantify because it depends on your company, your market, and how aggressively you are working to grow revenue.
You can also request additional time with your coach when it would be useful. We ask that you use that access thoughtfully: come prepared, share context in advance, and make sure the time is focused on work where your coach can add real value.
Click here to access our Program Guide to see how the program time is structured each week, and the outcomes you can expect.
Yes. If accepted into the program, it’s not any one person, it’s anyone on your team (including advisors and Board members) that you would like to include.
The goal of sales is more customers, higher revenue, and efficient sales cycles.
The specific outcomes vary based on your growth objectives, your level of maturity when you enter the program, and the variables in your sales process (e.g. are you selling into an enterprise with 12-18 month sales cycles).
Click here to see examples of what our alumni have achieved.
No. We have helped 650+ B2B founders across 25+ industries, because while your product and market may be unique, the path to product market fit is not.
Industry background has never been a barrier to revenue growth. What matters most is your willingness to do the work and apply a systematic approach to learning and selling.
No. We make them better. Your coach supports you and your team with practical tools, guided practice, and weekly accountability.
We complement whatever talent you have in place by helping everyone use the same frameworks, language, and process.
Yes. Many founders join before they have revenue (but you must have a sellable product). Early revenue is often a false positive of product market fit, so we care more about your willingness to learn, talk to customers, and do the work required to build repeatable sales.
No. GrowthX does not take equity. You keep full ownership of your company (and protect your cap table).
Our work is focused on helping you grow revenue in a capital efficient way so you can fund your business on your terms.
GrowthX is not a fundraising program, and we do not run performative demo days. We help founders become more investor-ready by sharpening their market focus, improving sales execution, and creating stronger evidence of revenue progress.
Investors know GrowthX and often pay close attention to companies going through the program, but the primary work is building the traction and judgment that make investor conversations stronger.
With your permission, our investors can join coaching calls, receive updates, and stay close to your journey. We also help you translate your traction into a compelling fundraising narrative, including how to use the playbooks we build together inside your data room. We’re also happy to make investor introductions.
Yes. With your permission, investors are welcome to join coaching calls, receive updates, and watch your progress throughout the program. Many do.
They know our focus on systematic revenue growth helps them de risk their decisions and support stronger portfolio companies.
Yes. The vast majority of the program cost is generously sponsored by Tom Golisano, which makes it possible for founders to participate at a significantly reduced rate.
Many founders then have the remaining program fee partially or fully covered by an organization already invested in their success. For the GrowthX program at the Golisano Institute, partners including 43North, NextCorps, and Launch NY are already proud sponsors for their founders and may help cover that remaining balance.
If you are affiliated with one of those organizations, we encourage you to speak with them directly about available support.
Founders may also have the remaining fee covered by another accelerator, local economic development agency, foundation, or investor. Feel free to introduce us to a potential sponsor, and we’re happy to help them understand the program and the value of supporting your participation.
Just the opposite! The first thing we usually do is save you money. Many founders overspend on stage irrelevant tools that are built for companies with product market fit and a repeatable sales playbook. Buying those tools too early is almost always a waste of time and budget.
We have never asked a founder to spend money on website updates, sales automation tools, or digital ads, and it has never stood in the way of real revenue progress.