What an exciting meeting today with Sterling Francom of Miller Business Innovation Center. Sterling has been involved in Creating an Incubator for many years now for SLCC (Salt Lake Community Center). They have a fantastic operation and a lot of success. One of the companies that graduated from the Miller incubator was Alligence, formerly Silent Wistle.
Some of the key things they are doing to make their environment more like an incubator and less like an executive office are through services like the following:
- Brown bag lunches once a month
- 1st Friday of each month they have suppliers and investors come in to meet with the companies
- They have a CEO roundtable semiannually
- They have peer to peer roundtables once a quarter
- Sterling says they will consult with each company often
- They offer each company once a month trainings by attorneys and CPA’s.
Sterling was very knowledgable and a pleasure to meet with. He has learned a lot of things through his incubator, and his passion is being able to provide good services and assistance to many early-stage entrepreneurs - all of which need a good support system. Sterling talked about the overall business culture in Utah and how it is changing due in part to the incubators in the State of Utah to becoming more open about ideas, social networks, and partnering.
If you have suggested resources for the Provo Labs Incubator set to open soon, please email me at michaeleagar<at>gmail<dot>com.
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