Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Chris Heivly, Executive Director, LaunchBox Digital (Part 3)

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

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Chris Heivly, Executive Director, LaunchBox Digital (Part 2)

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]

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Chris Heivly, Executive Director, LaunchBox Digital (Part 1)

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.

An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 6)

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.

An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 5)

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

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An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 4)

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

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An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 3)

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.

An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Can students apply to your incubator? Debera: They cannot be students. They have to have graduated. I don’t want to interfere with their education. So, we take people either when they’ve just graduated, who we feel have the ability and are energized and smart and have

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