How Northeast Indiana's Student Venture Lab is Changing Lives

As most people who have started a business with a great idea can tell you, getting a great idea is really not the hard part!

Anyone can come up with a great idea, but the execution, development, and introduction of the idea is the real challenge. When we consider that more than half of small businesses fail, we have to understand that bringing a new idea to the table is really just the first step.

As a freelance writer, in the late eighties, I wrote over 400 articles about small business owners who had businesses that were less than 6 months old. Today, only one of those businesses exists!
Today, that would not need to happen, because communities are coming together as never before to offer small business owners, and entrepreneurs support, information, and networking opportunities.
Fort Wayne, Indiana is fortunate to be the home to one of the most highly regarded centers in the United States when it comes to innovation. The Northeast Indiana Innovation Center offers a variety of services for all types of businesses.

However, the Student Venture Lab may just be one of Fort Wayne's best kept secrets.

The Student Venture Lab, with Steve Franks, as program manager is located in the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center, at 3211 Stellhorn Road in Fort Wayne.

As the founder and owner of the Green ABC's for Kids, it became a wonderful resource for my company for a variety of reasons. So, I decided to take the opportunity to do a question and answer with Steve Franks about how the Student Venture Lab came to be and where it is going.

Here is what I found out:

ABS) When did the Student Venture Lab begin?

SF) The Student Venture Lab began in 2009, following closely on the heels of a then-new NIIC student program called BizWiz. The first cohort of BizWiz began in May of 2008, and by early 2009 it was clear that some BizWiz student ventures were showing good progress. The Student Venture Lab was created to further encourage those student entrepreneurs with grants, internships, and office space.

ABS) How did the idea of the Student Venture Lab come about?

SF) Eight years ago, the Innovation Center held its first Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium (YES!), a day-long event where high school students work in teams to invent a product, design a business case for it, and then pitch their concepts to try to win prizes. After a few years, we realized that although YES! Students experienced an exciting day of entrepreneurship and innovation; we never saw them again after the event. We were convinced that some wanted to start and own a business while still in school, and so we started our BizWiz program, which then led to the Student Venture Lab program.

ABS) How do you find qualified students to participate?

SF) At first, most students were referred to us by teachers and professors '" or met us at YES! Events. Today, as the Student Venture Lab has become more well-known, students also find us on Facebook or are referred by other BizWiz or Student Venture Lab students.

The qualifications differ for those participating in BizWiz versus those participating in the Student Venture Lab. While BizWiz is open to any Northeast Indiana high school or college student who expresses interest, students must now apply to the Student Venture Lab. As of 2011, we use an application form similar to tech startup incubator Y-Combinator. For the Student Venture Lab program, we look for ventures with 2 to 4 owners, low capital needs and a quick path to revenue, a "portable" venture that may be taken to college and moved back to Northeast Indiana, a sincere intent to locate long term in Northeast Indiana, and a technology venture or a highly innovative game changing non-tech venture. Of course, if a student venture does not qualify for the Student Venture Lab, it still qualifies for our assistance via BizWiz - no one is ever completely turned away.

ABS) What are the ways in which the Student Venture Lab supports student start-ups?

SF) BizWiz is open to any Northeast Indiana high school or college student who wants to (or already does) own their own business. It meets monthly for peer to peer talk, an entrepreneur speaker who has "been-there-and-done-that", discussions of useful tools for startups, and discussions about how to become a better CEO. BizWiz students also meet with an Innovation Center business coach for one-on-one help, and can be introduced to a variety of people in the Innovation Center's business network who are willing to provide pro bono or discounted products and services.

We are fortunate that our funders (the Lincoln Financial Foundation, Grabill Bank, and the Edward M. and Mary McCrea Wilson Foundation) also enable us to support Student Venture Lab companies financially. In the past we have provided grants, internships, and office space to Student Venture Lab companies. As of 2011, we are switching to an investment program very similar to those operated by popular technology startup incubators like Y-Combinator and TechStars. For selected ventures, we provide a small cash investment and an in-kind investment of six month's office space in exchange for a small amount of equity (all future returns will be rolled back into the program to assist other student ventures).

During the six months, the ventures receive mentoring from local investors, CEOs, bankers, and others during a series of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. The ventures will develop their prototypes and business models, validate them with customers, and pitch their progress to investors, bankers, and other community leaders at Demo Day at the end of the six months. If they have truly made progress, they may receive a second similar investment, giving them sufficient time to close a larger investment. During the entire period, we provide a small stipend to the founders of the ventures. You can read the details at http://www.niic.net/college-high-school-entrepreneurship.aspx.

The last way our student startups receive support does not come directly from us, but is worth mentioning. The ventures and entrepreneurs in the Student Venture Lab and BizWiz are starting to form a community. They hang out together, they work together, they play together, they brainstorm together, they exchange ideas, and they help one another. We hope to see that grow further as the group grows.

ABS) Would you compare the Student Venture Lab to a business incubator?

SF) I'd call the Student Venture Lab a startup incubator inside a business incubator.

The Innovation Center is one of the premiere business incubators in the country. Like our peers, we lease space to budding entrepreneurs, provide business coaching support, and offer shared assets (that in our case includes simple assets like conference rooms and more sophisticated assets like biomedical equipment). Companies tend to stay at incubators for long periods of time. Some Innovation Center clients have been residents for years. Student Venture lab companies have access to all of this.
In the technology world, though, the concept of a business incubator is changing. The Student Venture Lab fits the new model that was introduced and popularized by Y-Combinator, and now adopted by a variety of others like TechStars and the Capital Factory. The new model provides a small investment combined with intense mentoring, in return for which the venture works very hard over a short period of time (typically 3 months, but we think our students will need more time) to prepare a demo and a business model to show investors. This allows technology investors to make lots of small bets and see which ones work out in a very short time frame (rather than the traditional model of investing a huge amount and waiting a long time to see if the venture will work out).

The Student Venture Lab has adopted many features of the "new" incubation model, and combined them with and fit them inside the "traditional" incubation model. We provide the physical amenities and coaching of a premiere business incubator combined with the investment, mentoring, and Demo day focus of the new school model '" and then adjusted that to fit the needs of students.

The Student Venture Lab is a significant resource for students in Northeast Indiana. There are so many brilliant kids in this region, just brimming over with ideas. Why not give the Student Venture Lab a try?
Check out their website at http://www.niic.com or call Steve Franks at 260-407-1754.