Startup entrepreneurs rejoice! After decades of living in the shadows and back alleys of entrepreneurship, business incubators are about to enter a Golden Age. Incubators – some now donning the updated moniker “seed accelerator”– are shared resource groups that nurture entrepreneurs and their fledgling ventures with mentoring, market research, office space, technology and other services.
At long last the stars are beginning to align for incubators to take a bigger, more coordinated and better-funded role in helping get businesses off the ground, starting with just the germ of an idea.
The latest jolt of juice comes from the newly formed TechStars Network (www.techstars.org/network), which will facilitate the sharing of resources and best practices among independently owned and operated incubators in the U.S. And to seal the deal, the Kauffman Foundation, the premier nonprofit organization backing entrepreneurship, just coughed up $200,000 to develop software to coordinate, track and analyze what’s going on with seed accelerators across all industries.
With some deep-pocket funding, and exposure as part of the federally backed Startup America initiative, the new network ensures that millions more potential entrepreneurs will know about expanding incubator opportunities.
TechStars Network – which didn’t exist until February 2011 – counts as its members the top incubators coast to coast, including TechStars itself, one of the hottest and most successful incubators going. TechStars offers entrepreneurs up to $18,000 in seed funding, plus mentoring and, most importantly, the opportunity to pitch to hundreds of angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the incubation period.
Other network members include Betaspring (Providence), Alphalab (Pittsburgh), BoomStartup (Salt Lake City), The Brandery (Cincinnati), Excelerate (Chicago), Founder’s Co-op (Seattle), Incubate (Miami), LaunchPad (New Orleans), Tech Wildcatters (Dallas), Jumpstart Foundry (Nashville) and many others.
Not to be overlooked in all the sparkle coming from TechStars is the much older but finally breakout-ready National Association of Business Incubators (NBIA), which has spanned 25 years to become one of the world’s leading organizations advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship. While NBIA’s main mission is to help incubators (about 1,900 worldwide are members), the best (free) benefit the organization has for entrepreneurs is an incubator-locator tool which lists incubators by state. Click the “Find a Business Incubator” link under “Directories” on the right side of the NBIA home page (www.nbia.org). •
Dan Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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