Business incubators are institutions that help micro and small companies that are start-ups or that are in operation, whose main characteristic is to offer products and services with a significant degree of differentiation. They offer technical and managerial support and complementary training to entrepreneurs, facilitating technological development and access to markets and investments. Incubators are the primary locus for the formation of innovative small businesses.
FoodFutureCo is a scale-up accelerator that works more like food incubators that can help grow your food company. Companies that seek incubators, in addition to receiving managerial, administrative, and marketing support, receive technical support for developing their technology.
With that, the enterprise can be followed from the ideation phase, where the concept and the business model are still not clear and need to be validated by the market, until the consolidation of its activities, where they will be able to be graduated, that is, obtain the emancipation of the incubator with competitive conditions to go to the market.
Generally, they also offer a physical space specially built or adapted to temporarily house the entrepreneurs – currently called incubated companies – and promote access to services that companies would hardly find acting alone and without adequate guidance.
In addition to this individualized space for the installation of offices or laboratories, the incubators usually offer a meeting room, auditoriums, an area for product demonstration, a secretariat, libraries, and a series of other benefits through partner institutions of teaching and research, government agencies, and private initiatives.
Business incubators favor the entrepreneur in the following areas through consultancy:
- Business management;
- Technological management;
- Marketing of products and services;
- Accounting;
- Marketing;
- Legal assistance;
- Fund-raising;
- Contracts with financiers;
- Production engineering;
- Intellectual property.
Who needs a business incubator?
Any entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs who has an innovative project and wants to open their own company can participate in business incubators. The existing ones can also participate in the program and receive support from the incubator. For that, it is necessary to have a project to improve or develop new products and services.
Incubators generally accept projects submitted by:
- Individual. Opportunity for researcher/professional who has developed a technology and wants to set up their own company with an innovative product/process.
- Existing company. A company in the consolidation phase that intends to develop a technology within the incubator.
- A new company created by a Legal Entity. Company or business group that wants to create a new technology-based company.
In all cases, the entrepreneur must go to the incubator of his choice to identify the requested information that will be part of the analysis of his entry. There are incubators with a continuous flow of entry and others with specific entry periods through a selection notice.
How to find the right business incubator
For start-ups, it is not that easy to find a suitable incubator. For this, the offer must first be analyzed, and then the interpersonal level must also be right. It is, therefore, important to first get an overview.
To find the right startup incubator, the goals and ideas of the startups and those of the incubators must also match. The following questions help with the decision and the assessment of an incubator:
- Which industries and business models has the incubator already supported?
- What is the sum of the incubator financing in the first round of financing?
- What specific services does the incubator offer?
- Which team is behind the business incubator?
- Do the basic principles of the start-up center match your own ideas?
It can also be helpful when searching to talk to startups that have already been supported by the selected incubator. Valuable empirical values from other companies can thus be included.
