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. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Diane Dimeff, eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Irina: Would you give us more details on your three programs?

Diane: Yes. The first program is the eSpace incubator, which we have talked about quite a bit.

The second program is called the Straight to Space (S2S). In this program, we provide entrepreneurial aerospace companies both in our incubators and outside our incubator with training grants to support the training of technicians and engineers they have hired from outside the aerospace industry. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Diane Dimeff, eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Diane: Once they become an official incubator company, the mentor helps them to develop a first order strategic plan. What are you going to accomplish in the next three to six months? Whom do you need to meet in order to be successful? These are some questions we ask. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Diane Dimeff, eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

Diane: The other program we have is called the Venture Design program. And this is with the University of Colorado Aerospace Engineering Sciences program. We support a number of graduate hands-on and design projects in the aerospace department, in the hopes that one or more of them will transition in the incubator. >>>