Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 5)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi Irina: How many people work at the Venture Lab? Tom: There are about 15. And it’s a free service. Again, the universities and the counties here pay for the staff at the Venture Lab. And I use the Venture Lab here a lot to help with the

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi Irina: Do you have any special initiatives at the moment? Tom: We try to team up with different organizations to do stuff. We’ve got a contract with the Department of Energy to put together this “MegaWatt Ventures” program.

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi Irina: What are the tools and methodologies you use in your entrepreneurship class? Tom: One of our staff members runs the program, and we bring in external consultants, subject matter experts, for each one. One of my staff members sits in on the class every time and

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi Tom: It is our job to figure out how to help entrepreneurs. We have about forty people in the area who donate their time and effort to help these companies. There is a lot of peer help going on among the entrepreneurs. We also provide free accounting

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi I am talking to Tom O’Neal, executive director of the University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program which is a University-driven community partnership that provides training, infrastructure, and professional services for entrepreneurs in central Florida.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Tim Cartwright, Chairman, Tamiami Angel Fund – Naples, Florida (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Tim: If you’ve got an active angel investor who has the capacity and is ready to commit dollars, if [the answer’s] yes, that’s easy. You understand that.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Tim Cartwright, Chairman, Tamiami Angel Fund – Naples, Florida (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Tim: As I said, in southwest Florida, we had never had an angel fund prior to August 1, 2010. Just because it doesn’t exist doesn’t mean we can’t build it, not only in our region, but in the state of Florida. I think we’re emerging. I think

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Tim Cartwright, Chairman, Tamiami Angel Fund – Naples, Florida (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Does your fund have any industry preferences, or is it pretty broad? Tim: [First], I think we need to have a more robust entrepreneurial ecosystem here in the entire state of Florida. And there are a lot of elements to that ecosystem. Not only access to

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