A leading Buffalo CPA firm made an early bet on startups. This is what happened.
It started with a 2013 presentation at the Buffalo Club.
Andrew Pulkrabek, the first fulltime leader of 43North, was introducing Buffalo business leaders to an ambitious vision: Buffalo would recruit entrepreneurs from around the world and help them build companies here.
Cory Van Deusen and Paul Herlan were in the audience.
"The presentation was tech-forward," said Van Deusen, a Lumsden McCormick tax accountant who has since become a partner. "It was intriguing. It sounded like something you didn't hear a lot in Buffalo."
Van Deusen and Herlan, Lumsden’s director of business development, introduced themselves afterward.
"It sounded like something that Buffalo needed," Herlan said. "We wanted to be part of it."
The conversation continued over drinks the following week. Together, they developed one of 43North's earliest corporate sponsorships, centered around mentoring founders and providing practical accounting advice.
Neither knew it at the time, but the relationship would eventually reshape part of Lumsden McCormick itself. For more than a decade, the accounting firm has played an active role as Buffalo's innovation economy matured from an idea into an established part of the region's business landscape.
Both Van Deusen and Herlan are part of the 43North Foundation Ambassador Network, a new initiative that aims to drive the kind of corporate behavior in Buffalo that Lumsden McCormick has exhibited over the past 15 years. Read more about the Ambassador Network here.
Learning how founders think
Several months after getting involved with 43North, Van Deusen was working on a Start-Up NY project when he met entrepreneur Jack Greco.
"I asked Jack if he liked beer because I liked beer," Van Deusen said with a laugh. "We became really good friends."
Greco, a cofounder of ACV Auctions and now an active angel investor in Buffalo, would go on to impart one of the most valuable lessons Van Deusen learned about working with startup founders.
At the time, Lumsden McCormick was offering steep discounts to young companies in hopes of making professional services more affordable. Few founders accepted.
"Jack pulled me aside," Van Deusen recalled. "He said founders don't hear a discount. They hear an hourly rate with no limit."
Rather than billing by the hour, the firm began packaging services with fixed prices that founders could budget around. More importantly, it reflected a broader shift about working with entrepreneurs in scalable companies.
"They're wearing a thousand hats," Van Deusen said. "Jack always told me my job was to make their life a little easier because they were getting pulled in so many different directions."
Growing alongside the ecosystem
As Buffalo's startup community expanded, Lumsden McCormick expanded with it.
The firm developed specialized expertise around research and development tax credits, Start-Up NY incentives, venture financing and other issues that rarely arise in more traditional businesses.
"We further advanced our service offerings around tax items that are specific toward startups," said Kristin Ré, a principal in Lumsden’s tax department who now takes on much of the work with startups. "Things like qualified small business stock, stock options, complex equity transactions and research and development credits became areas where we built expertise."
Many of those services barely existed inside the firm when Ré joined Lumsden McCormick in 2015.
Van Deusen sees that evolution every time he describes the firm's client base.
Today, the startup practice represents a meaningful part of the firm's business while also giving younger accountants exposure to entrepreneurs who often aren't much older than they are.
"I tell people we really have two major industries," he said. "Manufacturing and technology. If you had told me years ago that a Buffalo CPA firm would have a technology practice, I probably wouldn't have believed you."
A different kind of community engagement
The relationship also changed how the firm thought about serving Buffalo.
When 43North moved into the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Lumsden McCormick opened regular office hours inside the building. Anyone could stop in and advice was free.
"We wanted people to come in and pick our brains," Herlan said. "If something was happening on that campus, we wanted to know about it."
The firm's involvement extended well beyond tax returns and financial statements. Lumsden McCormick also reviews quarterly financial reports submitted by 43North portfolio companies as part of the competition's funding requirements. Over the years, its professionals have helped founders navigate accounting issues that many encounter for the first time.
The work has benefited both sides.
"It allowed us to become good corporate citizens in a way we never really had before," Herlan said. "It got us out into the community and into this entirely new ecosystem."
Watching Buffalo change
When Ré graduated from college, few accounting students had even heard of 43North. Today, many already know the organization before interviewing for jobs.
"Students are aware of the startup community in Buffalo," she said. "That wasn't the case when I started."
Herlan believes 43North also helped introduce Buffalo to a national audience.
“(43North president Colleen Heidinger) does an amazing job telling Buffalo's story," he said. "She's talking to investors and venture capitalists all over the country. A lot of people know about Buffalo now because of that."
Van Deusen sees another shift.
"I think 43North reintroduced Buffalo to what entrepreneurship really is," he said. "It's really opened my eyes to how beneficial entrepreneurship and taking a chance can be for a local economy."
Looking ahead
More than a decade after that first presentation at the Buffalo Club, Van Deusen still enjoys talking about startups in Buffalo.
“I've made some of my best friends through it,” Van Deusen said. “My wife works in the startup community now. I'm excited to see what happens in the future."
Herlan shares that enthusiasm.
Looking back, both believe they received as much from the relationship as they gave.
The startup ecosystem helped Lumsden McCormick build new capabilities, attract employees interested in entrepreneurship and become part of a community that barely existed when Pulkrabek first described the idea more than a decade ago.
Today, that ecosystem has become one of Buffalo's defining economic strengths.
And for Lumsden McCormick, growing alongside it has been one of the firm's most rewarding investments.
"We were there from the beginning," he said. "As professional firms, nobody was really there before us. We were the first ones to raise our hand."
