Business Incubator Series: Mark Lieberman, Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County, California (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How long can entrepreneurs stay?

Mark: Entrepreneurs can stay in our incubator no more than four years. We will look at extenuating circumstances and possibly extend that for another year at most. Most of our better clients graduate sooner than that.

Irina: You said you use a lot of volunteer experts. What else do you use to help your clients?

Mark: Well, again, it’s about a system of referrals. We don’t provide legal assistance. We don’t provide CPA assistance. It is really about the entrepreneurs learning to garner resources and make arrangements for themselves. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Mark Lieberman, Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County, California (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Mark: We receive about five or six applications a month.

Irina: How many out of those do you usually take in?

Mark: We have two programs. One is the resident program where we devote most of our resources. We also have an affiliate program. The affiliate program is for clients who aren’t residing here, maybe a bit earlier than we would like to see them, but we feel [they] have good potential. We don’t want to turn them away [so] we put them in our affiliate program. Of those five, perhaps one or two are not ready. One or two will go into the affiliate program. One or two might come into the incubator. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Mark Lieberman, Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County, California (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Mark: We have connections to two of the largest angel groups in Southern California. The Pasadena Angels reside in our incubator. That’s over 100 member organization. And The Tech Coast Angels, I think, is the largest angel network in the world with close to 300 members, all here in Southern California. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Mark Lieberman, Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County, California (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Could you give an example of what kind of entrepreneurs you would like to see applying to your incubator?

Mark: Yes. I am looking at a spin-out at a university where they might have had an SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research Program] grant or an STTR grant [ Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program]. They made a prototype. They have approached a couple of companies to figure out if there is a market there. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Mark Lieberman, Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County, California (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Mark Lieberman, manager of regional economic development at the Community Development Commission of the County of Los Angeles. He has also been managing Business Technology Center of Los Angeles County for the past nine years. >>>

Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 8)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: If a company we invest in exits down the road at some point, either through acquisition or going through a public market, that equity will come back for Citrix, which would be great.

[However], that won’t be the measurement on sustaining the program. The measurement on sustaining the program is does Citrix feel that we’re learning enough, that we’re supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a way we want to, that we think this is a good overall thing for us to be involved in. >>>

Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Once entrepreneurs are accepted in the program, what is the next step?

John: We’ll work with each of them individually. What’s a little different about our program than some of the other programs out there is this is not a class-style program where we bring in a bunch of entrepreneurs for, say, three months and we run them through a curriculum of presentations and all that stuff. >>>

Business Incubator Series: John McIntyre, Citrix Startup Accelerator (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: Having that video capability built into Angelsoft has been nice. I had one entrepreneur, for instance, who put his application in a few weeks ago. He just walked around the room on a Friday night saying, “We’re about to ship our Beta version. We’re going to send it off to Apple here to go into the Apple store in a couple of hours.” >>>