Business Incubator Series: Dave Knox, The Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are the core benefits that your accelerator provides?

Dave: The Brandery is about accelerating the path of a startup. We’re lucky to have a great network of mentors, ranging from startup founders to venture capitalists to consumer marketing professionals.

Through that mentorship we provide a very deep network of connections for our companies.

The second thing that we provide is a focus on the brands and consumer marketing of the startups. That’s something that most others don’t offer.

We currently have seven agency partners that donate, pro bono, the brand equity and brand identity services to the startups.

So, you’re going to leave our accelerator with an amazingly formulated brand and a great plan for attracting customers to your business.

Those are the main two benefits.

Like every accelerator, we also have great support that we provide in terms of free office space, legal services, accounting and all of those.

Mentorship and brand and consumer marketing are our points of differentiation.

Irina: Is there anything else that makes your accelerator different from the rest?

Dave: I think the other thing is your connection to the brand in the corporate. We have close partners in terms of mentors from companies like Procter & Gamble, General Mills and other Fortune 25 and Fortune 50 companies.

If those types of companies and brands are important to the future success of your business, you won’t find a place with better access to those companies.

Irina: Where do you get your applications?

Dave: We source through two sources. One is referrals from our mentors. We are lucky to have a broad national group of mentors. A lot of our best companies are coming from direct referrals from them.

Second is through reputation, being fortunate enough to be named one of the top 10 accelerators in the country, being invited to be an inaugural member of the TechStars Network.

All of those have been great referrals for us.

Irina: How else do you benefit from being in the TechStars Network?

Dave: It’s a couple of things. One is as an endorsement, an endorsement that we are a program that has startups in mind, that we follow the principles of TechStars in terms of mentorship and focus on that.

That endorsement is probably the most valuable.

The second is having access to the network that is TechStars and being able to connect with similar programs that are going through similar things, connecting our companies with the startups that are a part of TechStars, so they can be a source of advice and guidance.

Having that association is a great benefit.

Irina: How many applications did you receive, say, in 2010 and 2011?

Dave: We don’t talk about specific numbers, but we had a 40% increase in applications this year. We saw applications from 22 states and 7 countries this year.

Irina: How many companies do you usually select?

Dave: This year, we’re selecting nine. Our goal is to select eight to 10 on an ongoing basis.

Irina: How many times a year do you run your program?

Dave: Currently, we run it once a year. That’s our current plan.

Irina: Once the companies are selected, what’s the next step?

Dave: Once they’re selected, we generally inform companies four to five weeks before the program begins.

If they’re not from Cincinnati, they’re first step is relocating here and getting settled in the city.

The program begins on August 1. We take them through an 11 to 12 week curriculum where we’re guiding them on a path to being successful startups.

During the course of that, we also bring in a series of guest speakers, have them engage with mentors, engage with their agency partners.

That all builds up to Demo Day, which, as I said, would be on October 13, when they are giving their pitches to a group of investors. Last year, the audience size was roughly 150 people. We had a sell-out crowd.

Irina: How do you select companies? What are your criteria?

Dave: We select our companies [by having] our partners, our mentors and our founding team get together.

Each person looks for something slightly different in the startups, but generally, we’re looking for the right team to bring an idea to market, that has an unfair competitive advantage in terms of their backgrounds or reason to believe they can succeed.

We’re looking for an idea that is not only a big possibility and can be a game changer but one that is also relevant, at this time, to launch.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Dave Knox, The Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio
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