Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Terry: How do we reproduce that collaborative environment online in a way that the companies that come through here – almost 1,000 companies came through in the past three months – how do they collaborate without having to come through the facility every day? How do we extend that in way that there’s still value added but through our online tools? >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Terry: If a company is adding value to this ecosystem, we don’t have to charge them cash to be in this space. It’s not formulaic by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a lot more difficult to manage an incubator like this, but it’s a lot more valuable at the end of the day, to do it this way.

It also depends on the time and the availability. If it makes sense for us to bring somebody in and we’ve got some room and we can afford to take a little bit more risk … Again, our revenue model is not just about the real estate. We don’t have to charge for the real estate.

If we’ve got opportunity or upside in corporate development or equity, then we can afford to be a little more risk-taking on the real estate side of it. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Terry: One of the companies that launched here last week is called Photogram. It is similar to Instagram in the mobile app space, which was very popular. Photogram [which targets new parents] also has been performing just about as well, in terms of getting customers, as Instagram was. Instagram was a big national success in terms of how much people paid attention. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Terry: ITA, the Clean Energy Trust and almost 75 other organizations meet at Tech Nexus every month –roundtables for entrepreneurs, legal discussions and also a huge number of user groups, special interest groups, things like the Amazon Web services group, the Lean Startup group or the Adobe Flex User group.

So, it’s really an opportunity for the company that moves in to figure out how to engage and plug in to the learning and collaboration opportunities that surround them here. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Can you think of anything else that makes your incubator unique?

Terry: One is the community collaboration aspect. The other one is the fact that we are not focused just on a certain type or certain size of company or certain type of entrepreneur. It’s important to have a good, balanced ecosystem here.

I’ve not actually seen that in any other incubator anywhere. Most other incubators that we’ve studied tend to have a strong connection to one university or one government entity, or they tend to be narrowly focused on specific industry segments. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Is there an ideal company that would benefit from your incubation?

Fred: It’s an ideal mindset. It’s a company that’s open to the idea, it’s collaboration, it’s community.  There are benefits of working with not only the people who are here in the space itself, which is a traditional incubator space, but also the fact that we have the [Illinois Technology] Association headquartered here, along with the Community Trust – which is another nonprofit organization headquartered here – that bring in a constant flow of people. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to the co-founders and managing partners of TechNexus Fred Hoch and Terry Howerton. TechNexus was originally developed by private investment and community support in Chicago in partnership with the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) to serve as a “clubhouse” for the local tech community, and it evolved into co-working space and incubator for Chicagoan entrepreneurs. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Diane Dimeff, eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Irina: Do you take equity in the companies that you incubate?

Diane: We do. Because we are nonprofit we can’t technically enter into financial contracts with our companies. But we can enter into what’s called a pledge agreement.

We’d talk to them, and the template for us is something like this: We’ll have a pledge of 5% equity in the company and then 2% or 3% of revenue for two or three years. >>>