The co-founders of Brown and White Ventures Fund I are proud to have been a part of a tremendous advancement event hosted by St. Bonaventure University. Its second annual St. Bonaventure Invitational golf event at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina boosted the institution’s endowment to new heights. Beyond walking both Pinehurst’s newest course The Sand Mine, and the The Cradle, site of 4 US Opens, as well as a PGA Championship and a Ryder Cup, Jim Aroune (‘87) and Chuck O'Neill (‘83) shared three days of great conversation with alums who care deeply about the institution. Congratulations to SBU President Jeff Gingerich, trustee emeritus MichaelHickey, whose vision for the event is delivering a unique experience for alums, current board chair LukeBrown and the entire SBU Golf Committee for making a new fundraising tradition as Bona’s as any other. The limited partners of Brown and White Ventures commit to delivering 10% of the fund's net profits as a charitable contribution to the university.

Ask Hello Package CEO Paul Favorov about this company's next five years, he'll tell you it's not about reducing spending. Favorov believes in futureproofing his package delivery logistics systems. "IT's building an operating layer that adapts as the technology, the labor, and the buildings themselves change," Favorov said. And according to Favorov, In high-density real estate, the question was never humans or robots. It's how they work together — and the intelligence that decides where one ends and the other begins. Hello Package began simulating this balance — alongside the team at ObotX - open source universal robots, building open-source universal robots. Video of this cutting-edge ObotX design is being introduced to the public for the first time. A video showing the model at work was released by Hello Package.

Buffalo's Silo City rises around KAV Helmet's micro-fab operation. Century-old grain silos - the largest collection of them in the world - form the backdrop in which KAV's evolves. Their durability and history so inspired company leaders that they named KAV's newest 3D-printed cycling helmet after it. KAV's Silvo helmet is designed to bring intelligent fit, adaptive performance, and safety into a ready-to-wear platform built for everyday riding, according to KAV CEO and Founder Whitman Kwok. “Silvo begins where most helmets don’t: with real head data,” Kwok said. “We wanted to create a helmet that preserved the intelligence and structural philosophy behind KAV while making the ownership experience faster, simpler, and more accessible to more riders.” Orders for KAV's Silvo helmet are part of the next signpost the company approaches in a journey that began in Silicon Valley, turned east after winning $1 million in 43North's Year Nine cohort in 2023, then rolled toward Western New York. Silvo's launch comes a year after KAV pushed production into Buffalo's Old First Ward. KAV created ten new jobs in the region since moving from Redwood City, California. It operates one of the largest 3D printing operations in the northeastern United States. And from those more than 200 printers rolls Silvo, KAV's first ready-to-wear cycling helmet, which delivers the company's Five Star Virginia Tech safety features with customized fitting. "What's exciting isn't any one of those milestones on its own. What's exciting is watching a small team build an advanced manufacturing operation around a technology many people still consider a prototyping tool," said Alex Greening, KAV's Director of Operations. Grenning, a medtech engineering lead before arriving at KAV, studied at both UB and Canisius. He leads the floor at KAV's plant where, prior to Silvo production, the company printed its Rhoan cycling helmets. Rhoan, made for professional cyclists and those who ride as a way of life, comes together when KAV applies an AI algorithm to a single selfie of a customer's head. KAV's process builds each customer a one-of-a-kind helmet that fits them, and them only. While KAV does not apply the same process in making Silvo, the new helmet is unlike traditional helmet sizing systems that simply scale shells up or down. Silvo was shaped using thousands of real-world head scans collected through KAV’s custom-fit program. The result is a ready-to-wear fit system designed to feel more stable, natural, and consistent across a broader range of riders. Grenning's overseen the first stoch-building run of Silvo helmets and reports production times drastically reduced, compared to KAV's previous helmet lines. "Every day, I get to work alongside people who show up ready to take on new challenges, solve problems, and push the business forward," Greening said. The ready-to-wear Silvo will be available at the company's website for $200, moving KAV into an expansive stratum of the bike helmet market. "Watching that effort translate into products that customers trust and rely on is incredibly rewarding. "I'm proud of the team, proud of the technology, and proud that we're building it in Buffalo," Greening said.