From Early Traction to Market Momentum Across Pennsylvania

Getting a company off the ground is one challenge. Turning early traction into real growth is another.

Across Pennsylvania, founders are entering new markets, expanding operations, attracting customers, and proving their technologies in the real world. These milestones rarely happen alone. Through capital, strategic guidance, and hands-on business support, Ben Franklin Technology Partners helps companies scale into their next stage of growth.

This month, we are highlighting four companies across Pennsylvania that are gaining momentum in manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and sustainability, showing what it takes to build, grow, and scale in today’s market.

Helping Heavy Industry Run Smarter

PSNergy | Erie | Central and Northern Pennsylvania

Sector: Energy, Industrial Technology
Founder: Carl Nicolia, Founder and President

Industrial furnaces are essential to industries like steel, metals, and advanced manufacturing; but, many still operate with outdated combustion systems that waste energy, increase emissions, and limit efficiency.

PSNergy is helping change that.

Based in Erie, PSNergy develops advanced sensing, analytics, and combustion-control technologies that help industrial manufacturers optimize furnace performance in real time. Its systems help customers improve energy efficiency, reduce operating costs, stabilize production, extend equipment life, and lower emissions, all while operating in some of the harshest industrial environments. PSNERGYBal&Tune

To help PSNergy move from technical development to market adoption, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern Pennsylvania invested $400,000 across fiscal years 2022 and 2023, including a co-investment partnership with the Hartman Innovation Fund, part of The Erie Community Foundation. Beyond funding, Ben Franklin provided strategic business guidance and connections that helped PSNergy advance product validation, support pilot deployments, and build momentum within the metals and heavy-manufacturing sectors.

Reinventing a 100-Year-Old Industry

American Paper Bag | Sugar Notch | Northeastern Pennsylvania

Sector: Advanced Manufacturing, Consumer Goods
Founder: Ian Robson, Founder

Retail paper bags have remained largely unchanged for more than a century. American Paper Bag is changing that.

Founded in Northeastern Pennsylvania, American Paper Bag is modernizing domestic paper bag manufacturing with stronger, smarter, and more customizable paper shopping bags and mailers. From curved edges and die-cut logos to multiple handle options, American Paper Bag helps brands create packaging that stands out while improving sustainability and efficiency behind the scenes.

Its redesigned bags offer greater strength, reduce storage space by more than 50%, generate lower carbon emissions during manufacturing, and use fewer ethically sourced raw materials. These innovations have helped American Paper Bag attract major customers including Walmart, Amazon, GoPuff, and Eataly, while expanding operations nationally.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania helped American Paper Bag build that momentum through multiple rounds of support totaling $159,084, beginning with an early 2016 investment focused on marketing and sales. That support helped the company strengthen its market strategy, scale production, and leverage more than $7 million in follow-on funding. Today, APB employs 119 people, operates a 100,000-square-foot facility in Sugar Notch, and has expanded with a second facility in Reno, Nevada.

Bringing Critical Brain Data to the Bedside

Moberg Analytics | Philadelphia | Southeastern Pennsylvania

Sector: Healthcare Technology, Data and Monitoring Systems
Founder: Dick Moberg, Founder and CEO

In critical care, seconds matter, and so does access to the right data.

Moberg Analytics is helping clinicians make faster, more informed decisions by transforming how complex neurological data is collected, analyzed, and delivered at the bedside. The company’s technology helps hospitals monitor patients with traumatic brain injuries, stroke, coma, cardiac arrest, and other critical neurological conditions, turning overwhelming streams of brain-monitoring data into actionable clinical insights.

As Moberg expanded its commercial pipeline and advanced its next-generation platform, the company faced a major challenge when a Department of Defense grant was not renewed, creating immediate pressure on operations, staffing, and product development at a critical growth stage.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania stepped in with a $600,000 seed investment in October 2025, helping Moberg stabilize operations and maintain momentum. That funding allowed the company to continue product development, strengthen its regulatory pathway, support a growing sales pipeline across the United States and Europe, and add key leadership support including a fractional chief financial officer and full-time director of regulatory affairs.

The company closed 2025 with $260,000 in revenue, $138,000 in annual recurring revenue across five pilot sites, and $690,000 in qualified sales opportunities, positioning Moberg for continued growth in healthcare systems worldwide.

Turning Food Waste Into Renewable Value

Ecotone Renewables | Pittsburgh | Southwestern Pennsylvania

Sector: Clean Technology, Circular Economy, Energy
Founders: Dylan Lew, Co-Founder and CEO; Elliott Bennett, Co-Founder and Sales Executive; Kyle Wyche, Co-Founder and COO

Ecotone Renewables began as a student-led sustainability project involving founders from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, focused on how to keep food waste out of landfills while turning it into something valuable.

That early research evolved into ZEUS—the Zero-Waste Ecological Upcycling System, an automated on-site biodigester that converts inedible food waste into biogas energy and nutrient-rich fertilizer. Designed for institutions like hospitals, universities, hotels, and corporate campuses, ZEUS helps organizations reduce hauling costs, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and move closer to zero-waste operations.

As customer demand grew, Ecotone faced a new challenge: scaling a system originally built for pilot environments into a product that could be manufactured consistently and deployed commercially.

Innovation Works, part of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners network, helped Ecotone bridge that gap through early-stage investment and support through the Robotics Factory Scale Program. Working alongside engineers, Ecotone redesigned key components of ZEUS with manufacturing-ready specifications, improved fabrication processes, built in-house prototyping capabilities, and established manufacturing partnerships to support future growth.

Today, ZEUS systems are being deployed across hospitals, universities, restaurants, and corporate campuses, and Ecotone recently secured a $2.2 million U.S. Department of Agriculture award to accelerate fertilizer production and commercial expansion.

Powering Growth Across Pennsylvania

Growth happens when founders gain customers, enter new markets, secure follow-on capital, strengthen operations, and continue building through every challenge that comes next.

Across Pennsylvania, Ben Franklin Technology Partners helps make that growth possible by pairing capital with strategic guidance, technical expertise, and the right connections at the right time. As these companies continue to expand, they are creating jobs, attracting investment, and helping shape Pennsylvania’s innovation economy for the future.