Business Incubator Series: Interview With Kerry Rupp, Managing Partner, DreamIt Ventures – Philadelphia And New York City (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Irina: Do you have any special initiatives at this time?

Kerry: I would say our expansion in New York City, which should be our first time operating in the city, this summer. We brought on a locally-based managing director, Mark Wachen, an entrepreneur who was the founder of the company called Optimost. Mark will now be running the New York program on the day-to-day basis this summer. We think he brings in a lot expertise and a [good] local network.

So, that is a big initiative for us, expanding the program [to New York City]. Our Startl partnership and our focus with them on visual education is also a special initiative.

Irina: Is there anything that could help your program to be stronger and grow?

Kerry: We are growing at a pace that we think is appropriate right now. As I mentioned before, we don’t want to bring more companies in at the same time because we think we have a good size in terms of the community working.

In the past three years, the track records of the companies that are coming out of the program have been very successful, so we wanted to expand [the program].

We’ve chosen New York in part because 12 of our alumni companies are there. They have been on the ground in New York and came to us and said they have seen a lot of companies that could benefit from the same type of program that we gave them, so they basically called for us to come there.

Not only do we see the problems there, in the marketplace, but also we know that our alumni will be there to help support the program and give advice to the young companies. Also, there is an exciting amount of entrepreneurial activity happening in New York [right now]. There is a lot of interest from the investment community supporting those companies once they exit a program like ours to keep them growing.

So, I think, right now we don’t feel growth challenges. We see there are a lot of opportunities, and depending on how it goes with these two programs, we may look to future growth when we are ready.

Irina: What about efficiency and cost effectiveness?

Kerry: For us, because it is so much about the people, I don’t think you could have systems or quantifiable methods that would ever let you vet what the people are like, how passionate they are, how well they work together, how open they are to mentorship, or how well they listen. That is a lot of what we base our screening on. I think [this approach] requires people to have conversations in real life.

So, I guess, my gut reaction to that question is, unfortunately, not for the hard part. I don’t see any way to streamline that. So far, we feel that our application tool is very effective.

Irina: What do you do with the more than 200 entrepreneurs who apply but don’t get accepted in your program?

Kerry: We do follow up with them to let them know that they weren’t accepted, and if they are interested in getting feedback on why, we take some time to let them know what it was about, whether it was [something] about their team or their  idea that made us choose other companies instead of theirs.

Obviously, there are several hundreds of them, so we try to keep that to a pretty brief response. But, we do try to be respectful in that way, so that they know what they could work on. And, in some cases, the companies are interested in applying again. So, we give them some direction and say, Hey if you made these changes or you show this traction, we will be interested in looking at you again.

In fact, in our summer 2010 program in Philadelphia, we accepted a company that had applied and been rejected in 2009. We accepted them because they made a lot of those changes, made progress, and worked on other things that we thought were lacking in the first round. That has been an effective approach for us.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Interview With Kerry Rupp, Managing Partner, DreamIt Ventures – Philadelphia And New York City
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