The Business Incubator
Paul Addy
ENT 101 Discover the Entrepreneur Within 22236306
Jason Ratledge
February 16, 2014
This analysis will begin by answering the first question that may come to mind when discussing business incubators; what is a business incubator? A business incubator can be thought of as the fastest way to get an idea for a business venture from the drawing board to the operational phase. Typically incubators are geared towards the early stages of developing a business or the pre-revenue stage of development. A more traditional business incubator may be focused on office space. Office based incubators could provide a small office or cubicle and allow the entrepreneur to use additional typical office amenities such as meeting rooms, copy machines, fax machines, and internet in a professional setting. The cost of rent is typically cheaper than market rates and sometimes even free. Business incubators can be managed by real-estate landlords looking to fill empty office space, fellow entrepreneurs looking to network common interests, or economic development partners looking to revitalize a particular geographical area. Business incubators can provide services and networks specifically tailored to the entrepreneurs needs while developing their venture. These services can include mentors, referrals for legal and licensing questions, attorneys, service providers, as well as expert advice from business men and women who have experience navigating the everyday realities of running a business. Business incubators can also be geared towards technology in the form of sprawling industrial parks or scientific based laboratory facilities in a University setting. In addition to the traditional business incubator there are o...
... middle of paper ...
...nce, only accepts 1% of nearly 4,000 applications each year and of those admitted nearly 80% go on to raise venture capital or make a significant angel funding round (Geron, Mac 2011). In the case of Y Combinator, the world’s largest business incubator, some of their entrepreneurs who start with them already have a product built before even starting (Geron, Mac 2011). Much like the art of entrepreneurship, the stage of business, whether in the start-up phase or funding phase, a mix of both, or simply looking for mentorship in helping develop a business plan as a whole, a business incubator could be the difference between success and failure. Extremely successful business incubators can literally be found all over the United States (Tiku, Joyner 2010). If an entrepreneur does their research they can find a business incubator that is right for their business venture.
Within our group, Clay acted as one of our primary leaders, especially in BizCafe, in which he was the team member with the responsibility to advance the simulation each week. Clay’s top trait according to StrengthQuest is Belief. I think Clay moderately displayed the Belief trait in mostly positive ways. While open to compromise and flexibility, in BizCafe, Clay would enter into situations with an idea already in his head. For example, when dealing with Special Decisions in BizCafe, Clay would always have an opinion on how to deal with the problem, his motivations based in his values or in pragmatism. Sometimes however, usually in trivial cases, these strong beliefs lead to a level of stubbornness and inflexibility, for example, at the beginning
Brush, C. G., Kolvereid, L. L., & Widding, O. (2002). The life cycle of new ventures: Emergence, newness and growth. Boston, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/. startupbasics/business structure/article78032.html, Retrieved May 22, 2011.
Allen, K. R. (2012). Launching New Ventures: An Entrepreneurial Approach. 6th Ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
What major technology change has had the greatest impact on the quality of your life?
ONSET had its own adopted model for assessing opportunities in venture capital market, this model included:- * ONSET won't lead a start-up in an industry where they don't have the ability to reinvent a business model. Accordingly ONSET won't try to invest in a niche that is entirely new to it. We agree with this point, as the risk will be minimised if ONSET has the expertise in that field of business before. * ONSET will only invest in deals where it has a local presence. As the more distant they are from the management team, the harder the value ONSET can add to the business.
The case study is about an interview, conducted to four venture capitalists from four of the most prominent VC Silicon Valley firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Menlo Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Alta Partners. These firms invest both in seed as well as in later-stage companies, which operate mostly in the information technology sector. However, each VC has developed different sector portfolio depending on the expertise of the venture capitalists, the partner network and other factors. Professor Mike Roberts and Lauren Barley a senior research associate, both from Harvard Business School, have made a series of seven questions to their interviewees to understand how they evaluate potential venture opportunities and what they look at in order to decide if they will fund them and in which way. The questions were dealing with how VC’s evaluate potential venture opportunities, how they conduct due diligence, what process id followed for the decision making, what financial analyses is performed, the role of risk in the evaluation and how they think of potential exit routes. These questions were asked individually and revealed several similarities as well as differences in the strategy and the criteria that are used for the evaluation.
Adelman, P. J., & Marks, A. M. (2010). Entrepreneurial finance. (5 ed.). Bedford, Texas: Prentice Hall.
In particular, startups conform to a set of formalized, ritualistic practices in order to obtain venture capital (VC) funding during the “seed” phase. Almost paradoxically, new companies are regarded as a kernel of innovation and invention in the economy and yet they seem to emulate each others’ routines in the pursuit of early investment, decoupled from the actual products or services they plan to sell to the
In the 21st century, small and large, private and public businesses are all aiming towards economic growth. The small business marketplace is extremely dynamic and the changes are fast. Here are some facts from the US Small Business Administration on small businesses. There are about 30 million small businesses in the United States and employ just over half of the country’s private workforce. They employ a staggering 40% of high tech workers such as computer professionals, scientists and engineers. More than half of the small businesses are home-based businesses and two percent of them are franchises. One of the most important aspects is the fact that a majority of innovations in the United States come from small businesses. In 2008, there were 627,200 new businesses that started, 596,600 businesses that were closed and 43,546 companies that filed for bankruptcy. According to business experts, of all the small business startups, one-third of them are profitable and successful, a third of them just about break-even and the rest of them are down with negative earnings Some buyer’s develops as independent business owners, while others are more likely to prosper as franchise owners. According to a recent report by the Small Business Administration (2007), the United States had approximately 26.8 million small business firms in 2006. In fact, as recently reported by Moutray (2006), most firms in the U.S., are very small and account for about half of the country's non-farm real GDP. Over the past decade small business has generated 60–80% of new jobs annually. In reality, there are easy answers to the independent business versus franchise dilemma. Although, a franchise system offers benefits to owners such as brand recognition, to inc...
...tegies. I would check out the technical requirements i.e. equipment, business feasibility (land lease, vendors and suppliers, etc)
The distinction between the start-up and growth stages in not easily defined. The distinction lies in the revenues, profits are stronger and are consistent with an increase in customers, as well as, new and exciting opportunities for the employees to pursue. Managers can look forward to many managerial challenges, perspective policy issues and re-evaluating the business plan for revisions. A manager’s focus should be in the running of the business, with a greater emphasis on accounting and human resource management systems. New staff will have to be hired, trained and prepared for the influx of business.
A small business can be defined as a legal entity consisting of very few employees. Establishing a business such as a proprietorship is the least complicated among business structures. Proprietorships also have a major advantage over other business structures with regards to filing taxes. Profits generated by the business are taxed at individual tax rates thus avoiding the double taxation incurred by corporations. Local economies, government offices, schools and the unemployed benefit greatly from the growth stimulated by these companies. The taxes collected from small businesses and job creation makes small business a vital part of the community.
As industry liaison at the School of EEE at NTU, I facilitate industry partnerships and promote entrepreneurship within the school. In the coming months, we will be launching an entrepreneurship ...
It determines whether or not you business is earning money more than your invested capital or if it has reached your target profit for the month. Profitability is the primary goal of all business ventures. “Profitability is measured with income and expenses. Income is money generated from the activities of the business” (Hofstrand, n.d.). Compared to franchising, bootstrapping provides higher/ bigger possibility for growth. If you want to start one it's important to understand that startups are so hard that you can't be pointed off to the side and hope to succeed. You have to know that growth is what you're after. The good news is, if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into place. Which means you can use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you face. According to Graham, there are three phases of the growth of a successful business: There's an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out what it's doing. Second, as the startup figures out how to make something lots of people want and how to reach those people, there's a period of rapid growth. Lastly, eventually a successful startup will grow into a big company. Growth will slow, partly due to internal limits and partly because the company is starting to bump up against the limits of the markets it serves.” (Graham, n.d.). In starting a new business, there is higher or bigger possibility for growth because one