An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many companies were funded by angels during their incubation period?

Debera: At this point, Sam Cochran, [the CEO of SMIT, which runs] the Solar Ivy company got about $250,000 in angel funding. The other companies are less needy, less technology based. They’re not actually looking for angel money.

They’re looking to keep their businesses. We encourage them to hang on to as much as possible. They may go into a friends and family round. We don’t necessarily encourage them to try to get financing.

Irina: Once they’ve been accepted into your incubator, what are the next steps?

Debera: They move in. We give them a space. They settle in, and we start to meet. I’ll meet with each team. I’ll meet with them at least once a month to talk about their goals, what they’re doing, and assess what they’re thinking about and make sure that they’re thinking around all aspects of the business, not just, Here’s my great idea. I’m going to make this great product and everybody’s going to want to buy it. It’s like, OK, let’s do some numbers. Let’s go out. You need to do some research. They’ve done a bit of that ahead of time.

They get into it more seriously in terms of understanding the numbers, price points, how big the market is, and whether they’ve got something viable. They have to think about how are they going to hire people. What’s their marketing strategy? What kind of board do you want to develop? Whom do you need around you, supporting you? Those sorts of things.

Irina: What tools do you use to accomplish all of this?

Debera: Well, we use two things. There’s a system we use called the StartupWheel. I use that. It’s not robust enough for what we do because it doesn’t really think about sustainability in any way.

So, I do use StartupWheel, but in the center of that wheel are very strongly defined values. Each company has strongly defined its values.

I put each of the Startup Wheel wedges through this question: How does sustainability fit in there when you’re thinking about all parts of the value chain?

Where is sustainability when you’re thinking about your market position, dealing with bringing in partnerships, or taking money from people? How are you going to compromise [with] somebody who’s doing bad things to the Earth and doesn’t care about sustainability?

But, you’re going to take money from them? Can we really do that? Those are the kinds of questions we’re asking. It’s a wonderful tool, the Startup Wheel, in terms of understanding entrepreneurship. What it doesn’t do is help you understand how sustainability fits into that. So, that’s what we do.

Irina: Have you licensed StartupWheel?

Debera: I’m licensed to use it and to do workshops with it and that sort of thing.

Irina: How does that work?

Debera: You go through the training and then buy a license. They’ve also asked me to participate [to be on their board of advisors] because they understand that what I’m doing and how I’m using it is expanding it in a positive way. I’m creating tools of my own that connect to StartupWheel to bring the lens of sustainability into play.

Irina: Do you share that with StartupWheel?

Debera: That’ll be something we will think about. They would love for me to just give it to them. But, I can see that as a potential revenue stream for the incubator. We haven’t negotiated anything other than that they’ve asked me to be on their board of advisors. As things develop and are more formalized, we’ll take a look at whether they want to add these tools.

Irina: What other tools do you use?

Debera: There’s a business model book, Business Model Generation by Alex Osterwalder. It just came out. It’s about six months old. It’s also a nice way to look at business models. It’s really accessible. [It’s a] very visual tool, which for designers is important. I think [it’s important] for anyone, but for designers it is critical because they think in pictures much more than words. Alex’s book – he’s a friend – is marvelous.

This segment is part 4 in the series : An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation
1 2 3 4 5 6