By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Chris: The board of advisors for each company enrolled will include two LaunchBox partners and two to three outsiders, who will meet every week for an hour and help to drive this company through the 12-week program. It’s really great. I sit in on every one of
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you announce in a press release or on the Web that the next program session open, and companies start applying? Chris: That’s correct. We do some outbound marketing. We get some mentions in the technology and entrepreneurial press. We’ve run for three years now. There’s
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What would be the ideal company to have in your incubation program? Chris: For the most part, first-time entrepreneurs who have a reasonably mature concept of what they want to build in a fairly large market or large market opportunity; something where the value is [so]
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold I am talking to Chris Heivly, executive director of LaunchBox Digital, an accelerator program for entrepreneurs based in Durham, North Carolina. The program structure and workings are similar to Y Combinator and TechStars.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Are there any other metrics that you measure? Debera: No, just whether [the companies are] able to shift from needing the support of the incubator to being their own companies. That’s our goal, basically, that they’re launched and they’re successful.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What other business development tools do you use? Debera: There are lots of tools for developing business plans. We use those. That’s fairly structured. Then, around [such tools] is the fairly chaotic experience of the other people in the incubator as well as all the mentors
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many companies were funded by angels during their incubation period? Debera: At this point, Sam Cochran, [the CEO of SMIT, which runs] the Solar Ivy company got about $250,000 in angel funding. The other companies are less needy, less technology based. They’re not actually looking
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many companies have you incubated since inception? Debera: Up until now, we’ve been involved with 20. We just brought in four new companies. The fourth will be coming in March. Of those, 16 are still in business.