Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Tom: It is our job to figure out how to help entrepreneurs. We have about forty people in the area who donate their time and effort to help these companies. There is a lot of peer help going on among the entrepreneurs. We also provide free accounting or legal services to the companies, shared conference rooms, and shared receptionists – a professional environment.

We certainly try to link them to the university and the faculty. We have a thing called Venture Lab here that provides current research and information about where the customers are. So, we have a lot of stuff that people wouldn’t have if they were just out there on their own.

Irina: Where do these entrepreneurs come from?

Tom: I think since day one we had a steady stream of customers. We run press releases on the success of our companies. Our success rate is very high –more than 90% of the companies are still in business, and all of our local economic development people and government sponsors and planners all refer people here. We have a very good referral network, we are well-known, and the folks in this community refer people to us all the time.

Irina: Approximately how many applications do you receive a month?

Tom: Probably five or six a month. About 50 to 70 applications a year. Last year was actually our biggest year. We accepted 48 companies into the program last year.

Irina: Why was the intake so large?

Tom: We opened some new sites on different locations, so that was a part of it. We opened three new locations in the past three years, so there are different customers and different areas we are helping out, but the quality and number of clients entering the program has increased.

We have a pre-incubator program that we make our clients go through, and we are doing it four times a year now. Usually there are about 16 to 20 companies a year that go through the class, so we have probably about 50%–60% that will apply to the program that have gone through the class.

Irina: Do they pay a fee for this class?

Tom: Yes, it is $400 for three and a half weeks. You go three hours a night for three nights a week. We developed the curriculum ourselves.

Irina: Is this class mandatory for anyone who wants to apply to your incubator?

Tom: Yes. Everybody has to go through the class. We may start helping them before they go to the class, but they still have to go to the class. We might be conditionally kind of helping them in the beginning to make sure that they are getting started, then the class will make the final determination whether they will be a client.

Irina: So, some people who graduate from the class are still not accepted, right? And nobody gets accepted without a class?

Tom: That is right!

Irina: The class takes about three and a half weeks. How long does it take for a company to be accepted in the incubator?

Tom: A month to six weeks. It depends. Since the classes don’t start every week, sometimes we have to wait for the next class to come around. So it can be as long as two months.

Irina: Once the company is accepted into the incubator, what is the next step?

Tom: Well, it is limited to fewer than 20 companies. We want them to have some interactions. We like it around 15. It is manageable. What we really watch is how coachable companies are.

If they are not just coachable, there is no reason for us to have them in our programs. So we watch how they interact with our instructors. We see if they are listening, we see if they are open to new ideas and such.

The worst thing you want in an incubator is someone who doesn’t want to be incubated. So we spend a lot of time looking at that – what their personality traits are and how open they are to new ideas, discussions, and coaching, and then whether their technologies are there or not.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program -- Orlando, Florida
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