Build the future in the Southern Tier
This valley invented the time clock, the flight simulator, and half of IBM. BUILD607 is a community of the people building what comes next here — founders, operators, makers, and the ones who never left.
The roots run deep
They called this place the Valley of Opportunity — and they meant it literally. When the Chenango Canal tied Binghamton into the Erie system, a farm valley turned into a manufacturing corridor, and for the better part of a century the Triple Cities made things the whole world used.
Shoes. Cigars. Punch clocks. Computers. Flight simulators. Companies here didn't just employ people — they built the parks, the theaters, the neighborhoods, and the carousels their workers' kids grew up on. That's not nostalgia. That's a track record.
Then the big employers shrank, and a lot of the story since has been written by people who left. BUILD607 is for the ones who stayed, the ones who came back, and the ones building here on purpose. The infrastructure is still here. The university is here. The cost of building is a fraction of what it is on the coasts. What's been missing is a room where the builders can find each other.
A community, not a mailing list
Six things we're committing to in year one. Everything else gets decided by the people who show up.
Builder nights
One night a month, one room, in Binghamton. Founders, engineers, makers, and operators — talking about what they're actually working on, not what they're pretending to work on.
The group chat
The unglamorous, useful part: a place to ask who does good fabrication work, who's hiring, who's raising, who knows a lawyer that answers the phone.
Long tables
Small dinners that mix people who are starting things with people who've already built something here. No pitch deck, no name tags, no panel.
The valley directory
A public map of who is building what across the 607 — startups, shops, studios, labs, nonprofits. If you can't see the ecosystem, you can't join it.
Warm intros
To the incubator, the university, the funds, the manufacturers, the city. Small places run on relationships. We'll make ours available.
Telling the story
The Southern Tier gets written about in the past tense too often. We'd rather document what's being built right now, in public, with names and numbers.
If any of these is you, you're in
- You're building a company in the 607 — any stage, any industry, revenue or pre-revenue.
- You run something here that works: a shop, a firm, a practice, a farm, a nonprofit.
- You're an engineer, designer, or operator who wants to build here instead of leaving.
- You're at Binghamton University or SUNY Broome and you're not waiting until graduation.
- You grew up here, left, and have been quietly wondering whether you could come back.
- You invest in, mentor, or otherwise put your weight behind people who build in this region.
Two things we're not
- A networking group where the product is the membership. Nobody is selling anything to the room.
- A nostalgia society. We're proud of what this valley built. We're more interested in what it builds next.
There's no fee to join, no application committee, and no gatekeeping. Sign up, show up, and bring someone with you.
Get in the room
Tell us who you are and what you're building. We'll add you to the list, send you the next builder night, and connect you with people working on adjacent things.
We email a few times a month at most. No spam, no selling your address, unsubscribe whenever.