Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: Do you have any special initiatives at the moment?

Tom: We try to team up with different organizations to do stuff. We’ve got a contract with the Department of Energy to put together this “MegaWatt Ventures” program. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: What are the tools and methodologies you use in your entrepreneurship class?

Tom: One of our staff members runs the program, and we bring in external consultants, subject matter experts, for each one. One of my staff members sits in on the class every time and observes the clients. On the last night, the clients have to give a full presentation, and we evaluate the companies’ business opportunities. Those evaluations are entered onto a list, and if a company applies, we look at all of the evaluations and notes of instructors notes and involved judges. Then we make a decision. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many investments has your pre-seed fund made in the past 12 months?

Skip: In the past 12 months, we’ve made 12 investments. In the life of the fund, we’ve made 52 investments. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Tom: It is our job to figure out how to help entrepreneurs. We have about forty people in the area who donate their time and effort to help these companies. There is a lot of peer help going on among the entrepreneurs. We also provide free accounting or legal services to the companies, shared conference rooms, and shared receptionists – a professional environment. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Can you name some success stories?

Skip: Compendia Bioscience is one company that literally took full advantage every program that SPARK offers.

It’s a cancer diagnostic. It’s a software product that helps drug manufacturers and developers identify the best course of action in trying to cure cancer. >>>

AngelList, CapLinked, And Financing Marketplaces

AngelList has been generating  a lot of buzz recently. Today, Business Insider has a piece claiming that they are scaring VCs to death. Really? I have a hard time believing that! In any case, I thought this would be a good time to give readers my perspective on AngelList, as well as other fund raising services that are coming into the market like CapLinked, which has recently raised money from star investors like Peter Thiel. Other related services are SecondMarket, Kickstarter, ProFounder and Invested.In, the latter three specifically focused on crowd funding (not CapLinked’s approach), while the first is more of a brokerage.

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

I am talking to Tom O’Neal, executive director of the University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program which is a University-driven community partnership that provides training, infrastructure, and professional services for entrepreneurs in central Florida. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are the main reasons that out of the 30 entrepreneurs who apply for your services every month, 25 get rejected?

Skip: The main reasons are one, they’re not in the city of Ann Arbor. Our primary stakeholder, which provides a lot of the services, has that requirement. The entrepreneurs have to be in the city.

Two, they’re not close enough to commercialization. They still have to develop their business model and product a bit more before they’re close enough to commercialization for us to consider them. As I said, we’re called an accelerator. The idea is to identify those technology-based companies that are within a year of commercialization. Our goal is to make sure they achieve commercialization within a year or sooner. >>>