Business Incubator Series: Troy Henikoff, Excelerate Labs – Chicago, Illinois (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold I am talking to Troy Henikoff, co-founder and CEO of Excelerate Labs, a Chicago-based intensive summer accelerator for startups. The program attracts dozens of mentors from around the country to work closely with, usually, ten teams of entrepreneurs. The 13-week program begins on June 1 and on

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Ross Sanders, Bizdom U – Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio (Part 9)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Ross: We set goals. We set a monthly goals for the number of phone calls that the entrepreneurs have to make, which then translates into a number of meetings they are able to set, and a number of proposals, and a number of contracts that they need

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Linda Darragh, ARCH New Business Incubator, University of Chicago – Illinois (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay Linda: We are talking to impact investors from around the world to determine their criteria for investing. We are also looking at corporations in these countries to see what kind of products and services they would buy from entrepreneurial companies, to see if there is market as

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Linda Darragh, ARCH New Business Incubator, University of Chicago – Illinois (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay Linda: In our executive MBA program, students who want to build businesses can go through classes and get mentors and industry experts, and then they pick their ideas. They have their own competition that runs off on the side. Usually, the executive MBA students are a little

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Ross Sanders, Bizdom U – Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Ross: Dave Bing was in here [at Bizdom U]. He is now the mayor of Detroit, but he is a very successful businessman, founder of Bing Steel [and a retired professional basketball player]. He came in and he talked to our entrepreneurs.

Business Incubator Series: Linda Darragh, ARCH New Business Incubator, University of Chicago – Illinois (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay Irina: How many of these companies are technology businesses? Is there any industry preference? Linda: Almost all are technology businesses. A lot of it is mobile and Internet but there are business services as well. Among the ones that won last year, one is a business service

Read Full Article »

Business Incubator Series: Ross Sanders, Bizdom U – Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi Ross: Our selection is a rigorous process. We are trying to get the more serious people because we have invest a lot time and energy and resources into these folks, so we want to get in people who are really serious about it.

Business Incubator Series: Linda Darragh, ARCH New Business Incubator, University of Chicago – Illinois (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay I am talking to Linda Darragh, who is director of entrepreneurship programs and clinical associate professor of entrepreneurship at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. She teaches the New Venture Lab and the Social Entrepreneurship Lab and has been a coach for the

Read Full Article »