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.

Irina: And in the past 12 months, how many companies have been incubated?

Debera: We have had, I would say, [about] 10 companies. We used to do one at a time. In 2005, we brought in three companies. Two of those companies are still affiliated with the incubator; although they’ve graduated out a bit, they’re still within the incubator system.

Then, we’ve brought in four companies, two of which have left. Then, we’ve just brought in four companies. Sometimes, people come in for six months and they realize that they’re really not prepared to start a company. They’ve got all the energy. They think they can do it, but they can’t financially afford it.

So, what we do is we give people about six months to see if they can make it work. If they’re able to make it work, then they become fully vested in the incubator, where we really start to work them and share our mentorship network with them. We do that, anyway, when they come in, but it usually, takes them six months to go, “Yeah, I can handle this. I can still pay my rent. I can bring enough income from other sources,” that they can be stabilized.

Irina: What are their expenses with you?

Debera: It used to be nobody paid us. We just offered it as a service. Now, we’re asking for a monthly membership of $20o.

From 2005 to 2010, we felt like we were incubating the incubator and coming up with our systems. Now that we know what we offer, we have a great structure to help the startups start up.

We know what we’re giving them. Now, it has a proven value. It’s basically $2,500 a year to be in the incubator. For that, you get space for your company – usually, it’s around 250 square feet – access to wireless, access to our services, access to our networks and the networks of the other people in the incubator, and access to our mentors, which is an extensive group of people who are willing to come in and work as needed with our people in our incubator.

We have a website. We’ll pay for workshops for them to go to. A couple of them just went to a VC workshop. They get pulled into this community that’s looking out for them in various ways as well as supporting the development of their companies.

Irina: When you say you pay for workshops, how does that work?

Debera: I go, “I think you should go to this workshop. It looks exactly like what you need right now.” I’ll negotiate a price and the incubator will pay for it. That will now come out of the $2,500 that comes in. So, we pay for it out of our budget.

Irina: What’s the range of those fees?

Debera: Usually, around $75 to $225. It depends on the workshop. Sometimes, it’ll be more. I think the most I ever paid was $600 for somebody to go. It’s their responsibility to come back and share the information with the group.

They have a responsibility, if they go on behalf of the incubator, to report back on what they’ve learned. On some level, they are learning for everyone. And they’ll be networking for everyone.

That’s why it’s important for them to meet every three weeks, because then they know what people are up to, what they’re doing. They can recognize somebody who’d be interesting, not necessarily for them.

We’re in New York. We come across people, amazing people, all the time, on an airplane, anywhere. If I know that Sam Cochran, who’s doing a solar project, is interested in high-tech solar, and I happen to meet somebody who’s got some interest there or is interested in getting involved with a solar company, I’ll say, “Hey, listen, I know somebody who’d really like to meet you.” Then I’ll hand that contact over to Sam, and vice versa.

This segment is part 3 in the series : An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation
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