Business Incubator Series: Stephen Fleming, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech – Atlanta (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Where do your applicants usually come from?

Stephen: We do get pretty good coverage of the entrepreneurial opportunities coming out of Georgia Tech. That’s both the spin-out companies, which are based on intellectual property owned by Georgia Tech, and the startups being started by students, those that are not based on the Georgia Tech intellectual property. These are just students or recent graduates who want have an entrepreneurial experience and create a company. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Stephen Fleming, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech – Atlanta (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many companies have been incubated in the past 12 months?

Stephen: Right now, it’s about 400. When we are talking about 400, you have to understand that in the new [approach] model, the companies don’t have to be resident in my bricks-and-mortar [incubator].

I’ve got 50,000 square feet of incubation space. At this point, I’ve got probably 35 tenants in that space. The other – a little more than 370 – companies are not tenants. We provide services for both. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Art Boni, Donald H. Jones Center For Entrepreneurship, Carnegie Mellon University — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Irina: How is your program funded?

Art: There are a variety of financial sources that support us: We have endowments, we have sponsorships, we have gifts, we get funding from the government, and we get funding from foundations. All of that comes in to support what we are doing.

We also – and this is a very small component – sometimes own equity in the companies we are working with, and sometimes four to five years downstream there could be a liquidity event, so that is an additional source of funding. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Stephen Fleming, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech – Atlanta (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Stephen Fleming, who is a vice president at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he is currently overseeing the Enterprise Innovation Institute.

The institute is focused on helping enterprises improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology, and innovation. During fiscal year 2009, among other projects, the institute evaluated 149 Georgia Tech innovations and formed 20 new companies based on this intellectual property; the startups that were founded based on Georgia Tech intellectual property attracted nearly $111 million in investment. The institute also assisted 44 startup technology companies through its incubator, Advanced Technology Development Center, and ATDC companies attracted $151 million in capital activity through venture capital investment and M&As. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Art Boni, Donald H. Jones Center For Entrepreneurship, Carnegie Mellon University — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Irina: What sources do you use for angel financing?

Art: We have a few fairly robust angel networks here. We have a couple of organized groups that are in effect almost the equivalent of an early-stage seed fund. One of them is called Smithfield Trust Company and another is called BlueTree Allied Angels. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant (Part 9)

Sramana Mitra: These are interesting analogies, using the different schools. You know, even at these schools, the rejection numbers are very high.

Naval Ravikant: They have to be.

SM: Of 500 deals, maybe five or 10 get accepted.

NR: Yes, I heard Y Combinator had 3,000 applications.

SM: If you look at the Google search for the term Y Combinator, every month 33,000 people are searching for it.

NR: It is definitely a hit. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Art Boni, Donald H. Jones Center For Entrepreneurship, Carnegie Mellon University — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi

Irina: When did you launch the accelerator?

Art: We launched last summer for the first time, and we are planning to run it again this summer. We will take probably three or four companies for a period of three months. Last summer we had six companies apply and we took four. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile – Santiago (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Are there any other interesting entrepreneurs in your program?

Jean: There’s H2020 created by Erika Anderson, who is an alumna of Singularity University in Moffett Field, California. [They collect data using their unique mobile phone-based survey. H2020’s Water Poverty Initiative seeks to “improve public knowledge about water problems in slums, increase the efficiency with which information is gathered and published, and stimulate implementation of scalable solutions.”] >>>