Innosphere board to decide on pact with Estes Park EDC for incubator
ESTES PARK — The fate of a proposed incubator program for the Estes Valley now is up to the executive committee of Innosphere, a Fort Collins-based nonprofit that assists tech startups.
The Estes Park Economic Development Commission board voted unanimously last week to partner with Innosphere to form the incubator as part of a broader strategy around job creation and retention to generate a more stable and diverse economy in a tourist town that bustles in summer but faces months of doldrums in winter.
Innosphere helps young companies with tasks such as launching their businesses, crafting business models, building teams and raising capital. Its executive director, Mike Freeman, told BizWest on Wednesday that his recommendation to approve the partnership will be shared with the committee at its next regular meeting in late July and, if approved, the boards of Innosphere and the Estes Park EDC will negotiate a contract for service.
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“Our executive committee will study the merits — does it make sense from a business standpoint to do this? The board will say ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’” Freeman said. “The road map for what services we’d provide has already been defined, so I think this is pretty straightforward.”
If the partnership is approved, he said, the launch of the incubator “could conceivably be this fall.”
Freeman, who also served on the advisory committee in Estes Park that studied forming the incubator, said he is confident the partnership makes sense for Innosphere because of “the value of the collaboration. We spent a lot of time building the services up for companies. Our thinking is that it’s easier to expand to include Estes Park than to try to build all this from scratch.”
Jon Nicholas, president and executive director of the Estes Park EDC, said the first order of business would be to have an Innosphere program director who would be housed at the EDC — and to obtain grant funding to pay that person. If a member of the community wanted to start a business, he said, that program director could plug the entrepreneur into Innosphere, the Larimer County Small Business Development Center, the county Workforce Center or other programs statewide that could benefit their plans.
“There are a couple key advantages for Estes Park,” he said. “Innosphere has established an organization, expertise and a network that can help connect Estes Park to the rest of Colorado. So we’ll be able to bring a lot of those resources to potential startups in Estes Park.
“It really is the culmination of a lot of engagement and and study of Estes Park, and we learned that we do have a lot of people interested in startups and innovation,” he said. “We have a lot of community members who possess a great deal of experience and knowledge. This will help us leverage that human capital. We have already plugged local people into Innosphere — clients who have business opportunities in Estes Park and local residents who are part of the SAGE mentor network.”
Innosphere’s SAGE (Social and Advisory Group for Entrepreneurs) provides early-stage companies with advisory and mentoring assistance as they prepare themselves to become a sustainable business.
Nicholas said the partnership would greatly expand what the EDC can do for local businesses.
“We do have regional connections,” he said, “but having a longstanding organization that plays such an important role in innovation and entrepreneurship in Colorado will really leverage our ability to make those connections.
“One of the things we have to do is educate the community about all the programs and services we will be offering for startups and entrepreneurs,” Nicholas said. “We have the existing partnership with Larimer SBDC and we want to find ways of promoting and expanding that as well.
“But Innosphere is a major addition. Services that a startup needs are different than just a small business. As it is, if that type of business were here, I would have to refer them somewhere else for that kind of expertise. But now we can build a local mentor network to be part of the Innosphere SAGE network.”
Part of the planning process for designing an incubator to meet a seasonal resort town’s unique needs included public meetings mentored by an Austin, Texas-based consultant. Nicholas said what was learned in those meetings was quite revealing.
“It was somewhat surprising to discover some of the talents and experience we have in this community,” he said. “Serial entrepreneurs, people who live here and have senior positions in national companies, angel investors, semi-retired, recently retired — it’s a whole mix.”
Nicholas sai8d much work remains over the next five or six months, including finalizing the business plan, obtaining federal and state grants, finding a local program director and working on branding the incubator.
But his board’s approval was “a terrific outcome for the planning process” and already has produced some results, Nicholas said. “Through the planning, we’ve actually already launched too new groups — an angel investors meetup and a startups meetup — and started making those connections.”
Initial funding for planning the incubator project has come from the third and final portion of a financial award to the town and the Estes Park EDC from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.
