The InNOVAte 2019 Challenge is a six-month accelerator run by Greentown Labs and the world’s leading construction and building materials company, Saint-Gobain. The program is focused on innovations that could disrupt the built environment. Keep an eye on our website for profiles on all four program participants!
Hyperframe thinks of itself as “the IKEA of commercial construction.” Its founders saw how the electronics industry relied on pre-manufactured parts that fit together intuitively, and decided to bring that approach to construction.
“We thought to ourselves, ‘Can we apply some of these smart engineering principles to the construction industry, and eliminate a lot of the labor that goes into construction, and essentially make it far faster to build a building?’” says co-founder and CTO Jay Cady. “So that’s what we did, and that’s how Hyperframe was born.”
Hyperframe’s building components are designed to fit together without tools and require no training to assemble.
Cady says Saint-Gobain has been extremely helpful as Hyperframe moves toward pilot projects, including with introductions and testing facilities, and that he would recommend experiences similar to the InNOVAte Challenge to other startups.
“There’s no better way to accelerate the growth of a company,” Cady says. “There are a lot of things about building a company that aren’t straightforward, they’re not common sense. To have an incubator like Greentown that understands and has mentors who have been through the fundraising and know how to talk to investors and know how to think about your product—and, probably most importantly, can help you prioritize what the most important things are to do right now—I think the value that provides is beyond measure.”
Greentown Labs is a community of bold, passionate entrepreneurs creating solutions for today’s biggest climate and environmental challenges. Located in Somerville, Mass., the Greentown Labs Global Center for Cleantech Innovation is the largest cleantech incubator in North America, operating a 100,000 sq. ft. campus comprised of prototyping and wet lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, electronics lab, and a curated suite of programs and resources. Greentown Labs is home to more than 100 startups and has supported more than 230 since its inception.