Business Incubator Series: Tim Lavengood, Technology Innovation Center – Evanston, Illinois (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Irina: How do you usually process entrepreneurs’ applications or inquiries?

Tim: I don’t have a hard and fast rule for that because, again, I don’t want people to articulate aspects of their business that they are not yet qualified to do.

I just don’t want them to spend six hours trying to produce a financial projection for their company because I know they don’t know how. So, most of it is conversational and again, that can be over the Internet or through meetings with me here in this office.

Irina: How many inquiries do you usually receive a month?

Tim: I am dealing with two today. I would say a month, probably 30.

Irina: Out of the 30 applications a month, how many do you accept?

Tim: I’d say, three a month probably would come in and about the same number would graduate. We are dragging furniture and stuff around here all the time! There is a lot of moving around here. I mean, we knock down walls and we put up walls . . . We are hard on the building, I must confess.

We have two buildings in downtown Evanston. One is on Davis Street, right in the center of the downtown Evanston, and one is in the South Evanston on Main Street. Both are across the street from the public transportation, from what we call the Rail, the subway.

One [building] has concrete floors and loading dock; it is more suited for light manufacturing-type companies. The other one in the central part of downtown is more of an office space which is more for IT oriented companies.

Irina: How long does it take for a company to get accepted in the program?

Tim: I, usually, have been dealing with the company for three to four months by the time either one decides they want to go ahead.

Irina: How do you conduct your due diligence?

Tim: Again, I like to do as much as I can by talking to them. I like to get their website. Usually, when they are local, they come by word of mouth. I know somebody they know, and there will usually be a couple of phone calls and a couple of conversations as well.

Irina: Once you accept them for incubation, what is your next step?

Tim: By the time they come in, I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what they need and what we can provide. So, depending on what they need, I may be helping to hook them up with some people over at the university; I may be starting to work with them in putting a loan application together or getting a line of credit they are going to need with a bank.

I may be trying to hook them up with a programmer if they are getting their software up online, or maybe getting a demo put together is what they need. It will depend on what their immediate needs are.

Irina: Do the companies have to pay additional fees for any additional services?

Tim: Not for those things I have described. But If they go beyond what we can do, I refer people to people who will charge them. But the package that I told you about that will bring them in here is the limit of what they have to pay to TIC.

Irina: What about the students they might hire?

Tim: Most of the student projects we have are done for grades. We work with the professors at the university. I do some matchmaking between classes and professors and what they want students to learn, and good companies that can give the students relevant opportunities.

In most but not all cases, as I said, we have about 20 students’ projects.  We had, probably, somewhere between 70 and 100 students last year who worked for grades, Then there are a few part-time jobs, summer jobs, for maybe another 15 or 20 students, where they do get paid.

Irina: What kinds of projects would they do for a grade? Would you give me an example?

Tim: Typically, they have to do with one of two categories. One is prototyping and design, so somebody may have a website that is not ready yet. We had a company that was developing a strain gauge piece of industrial equipment to characterize the flexibility of the material, and we had two or three students who have come in and helped with the design of that.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Tim Lavengood, Technology Innovation Center - Evanston, Illinois
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