What Corporate Incubators and Accelerators Mean for Your Business. Athletic support: Nike's Beaverton, Ore., headquarters. With a host of companies under his belt, serial entre-preneur Rich Schmelzer launched his latest company, Boulder, Colo. -based GeoPalz, pretty much the only way he knew how. He bootstrapped. But then a funny thing happened: Schmelzer met the Swoosh. Yes, that Swoosh--Nike. A nike program helped Alexandra O'Leary and Rich Schmelzer of GeoPalz step in a new direction. "It literally couldn't have been a better fit," says Schmelzer, who serves as CEO of GeoPalz. Schmelzer and his GeoPalz co-founders--his wife, Sheri, and Alexandra O'Leary--represent a new wave of entrepreneurs launching ventures with a little help from companies who've done it before. Why Big Companies Want In Conceptually, these programs--once called "intrapreneurships," a term now generally considered outdated--are not new.
They also are becoming more prevalent. Shell launched a corporate incubator as an offshoot of its R&D division almost 20 years ago. What to Look For. Running A Global Virtual Incubator: 10 Lessons We Have Learned. Posted on Tuesday, Dec 17th 2013 Further to my earlier post, Mentoring Startups: 10 Lessons We Have Learned, I want to also go over our learnings through running, what is today, the world’s only global virtual incubation program. 1. Reach & Scalability: We have successfully created a virtual incubation program that entrepreneurs all over the world are using. The self-service curriculum is quite rich now, which makes the program scalable. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. I could go on and highlight another 50 things we’ve learned, but for now, these offer a good snapshot.
Best Business Incubators and Accelerators | Reviews, Contract Details.
Incubator list. Silicon Valley, London, NYC: Startup Genome Data Reveals How The World’s Top Tech Hubs Stack Up. Last year, we covered an ambitious collaborative R&D project called “Startup Genome,” created by three young entrepreneurs, Bjoern Herrmann, Max Marmer, and Ertan Dogrultan. The goal of the ongoing project was (and is) to take a comprehensive, data-driven dive into what makes tech startups successful — and not so successful. Out of its research came, among other things, Startup Compass: A free benchmarking tool that leverages its data to allow entrepreneurs to evaluate their progress compared to other startups in their space. The product’s overarching goal is to allow founders to make more informed product and business decisions by “utilizing a data-driven feedback loop,” according to its mission statement.
While part of the team has since split off to focus on Blackbox, an educational program and startup accelerator, Herrmann and Marmer have continued toiling away at Startup Genome, collecting data from the some-16K startups that signed up for Startup Compass — and beyond. Startup Professionals Musings.
Business Incubators. What it is: Business incubators are organizations geared toward speeding up the growth and success of startup and early stage companies. They’re often a good path to capital from angel investors, state governments, economic-development coalitions and other investors. The National Business Incubation Association has more than 1,400 members in the United States -- and a total 1,900 members in 60 nations. How it works: Incubators vary in their strategies. Some are located in an actual physical space meant to foster networking among entrepreneurs and their coaches. Others operate on a virtual basis. Incubators sometimes call themselves accelerators instead, often when they’re geared toward jumpstarting businesses that are more developed. Many have potential capital to invest, or links to potential funding sources.
Related: Less Time, More Money, Mentoring at Accelerators, Incubators Think hard about whether your business is at a stage where it could benefit from an incubator. Limited Time Offer. Resource Library - National Business Incubation Association.