Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: What are your relationships with mentors? Do they get any stake in those companies or do they just want to help?

Paul: They just want to help. One, it is exciting for them. Two, it gives them lots of visibility and, yes, it is really useful to the companies. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: What are the core benefits to entrepreneurs that you bring to the table?

Paul: My three partners have all started businesses that you know, and in total there are hundreds of millions of users. We started companies that did quite well, and [with i/o Ventures], we are sitting down and giving a lot of personal attention to the companies we work with.

We give them an amazing office space to work out of, and most important, we also bring in the best angels and mentors we know and get entrepreneurs access to people from YouTube, Yelp, Digg, and so on. They are all our personal friends, and they will come and hang out at our companies. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How do you conduct your due diligence?

David: With 600 companies, and you’re picking 10 and investing little money and mostly time, diligence is mostly about the people. Again, we know half of them are going to change their ideas. So, we don’t really get into much market or product diligence. We look at the people, the references of the people, the past work of the people. A lot of it are gut [feelings] about people we would like to work with. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

I am talking to Paul Bragiel, managing partner of i/o Ventures, which is a three-month accelerator program for technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The partners of i/o Ventures come from companies like MySpace and BitTorrent, and their mentors are from Yelp, Digg, Mint, Mochi Media, and OpenDNS. They invest up to $25,000 if a startup is selected, and in return for the investment and mentorship, i/o Ventures usually gets 8% of the company in common stock. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are your mentors’ relationships with the companies? Is there compensation involved?

David: No. No compensation. Many of them will go on to be investors or advisors long term. That’s the natural outcome. At the start of the program, the mentors work for free. The reason they do this is that they want their entrepreneurial ecosystem to be better. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many companies have you incubated?

David: We’ve now done 81 companies. We’ve operated for four years in Boulder, two years in Boston, one year in Seattle, and it’s our first year in New York. We’re not expanding anymore. If you add all those up, about 10 per class, you get to 81 as the current number. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to David Cohen, the founder and CEO of TechStars.

Irina: Hi, David. Let’s start with a brief overview.

David: I’m the founder and CEO of TechStars, which is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator for Internet companies. Tech Stars funds 10 companies at a time in each of four cities each year. The cities are New York, Boston, Seattle, and Boulder. The mentorship program is three months long. At the end of the program, the companies get to pitch their ideas to investors. About 70 percent of the companies go on to raise outside capital after the program. >>>

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 same kind of stuff for our intellectual property tech transfer office. >>>