Blackstone
LaunchPad landed in Montana last summer with the announcement that Blackstone
Charitable Foundation would bankroll business incubators for student
entrepreneurs on the campuses of the state’s two biggest universities.
“We’ve got
a place on the MSU campus Strand Union Building, actually in the cafeteria,”
said Rob Irizarry, director of Blackstone Launchpad Montana State University.
He’s happy with the venue. “Everybody has to eat — it’s location, location
location.”
Irizarry
and Launchpad’s staff of four work with people “all along the arc of their
entrepreneurship with questions about their projects. ... We take them wherever
they are and help them along at their own pace.” He called it a guiding sort of
relationship.
There is
some space to work, computers and networked printing, but the LaunchPad is not
now a typical incubator where a tiny company takes residence until it has the
wherewithal to find and pay for professional space of its own.
The Bozeman
location opened in November, but “we started in earnest with the new semester
Jan. 9.” He said LaunchPad at MSU has worked with 150 students, so space
considerations would make it hard to actually house start ups in the location.
“Over the summer there will be less traffic, we should be able to put more
emphasis on those start ups.”
LaunchPad also
boasts a high-end TelePresence video-conferencing system.
The project
was made possible by a three-year grant totaling just under $2 million, through
the charitable arm of The Blackstone Group, a New York private-equity and
investment-banking firm.
The money
is not completely earmarked for the incubators on the two campuses, though.
Over the
three years, LaunchPad at the University of Montana and MSU each will receive a
total of $622,800, said Pam Haxby-Cote. She is Blackstone LaunchPad’s regional
director based in Butte’s Headwaters RC&D. Her regional director’s office
gets a total of $437,750 as host agency and administers the Montana grant,
distributing the money to the two campus operations, as well as producing
marketing materials and raising funds, especially for the time three years out
when the LaunchPads must be self-sustaining to keep operating.
Haxby-Cote,
Irizarry and Paul Gladen, LaunchPad director at UM are paid $70,000 a year
each. The rest of their allotments go to staff, facility build outs and other
incubator costs, she said.
Another
$316,000 of the total grant goes to LaunchPad at the University of Miami, where
the program was developed. The Florida location provides training for LaunchPad
directors and ongoing support for LaunchPad locations around the nation.
Besides
Montana and Florida, Blackstone LaunchPad has multiple locations in:
•
California.
• Michigan.
• Ohio.
•
Pennsylvania.
Headwaters
and Miami receive progressively lower amounts of the grant each year as they
have bigger upfront costs. MSU and UM LaunchPad funding rises from $182,500 in
the first year to $231,400 in the final year, she said.
“People
like this program,” she said, “LaunchPad helps provide opportunities for our
young people so they don’t have to go somewhere else,” to get a company going
or find a good job.
Irizarry
said entrepreneurs working with LaunchPad MSU include traditional software
start ups, a handful of software gaming start ups, and eight young companies
with physical products, including some in the hot arena of 3-D printers.
The
incubator uses a couple of layers of assistance, he said, starting with staff
and also working with “venture coaches,” mostly within the state, acting as a
“mentoring network. These mentors will have something to (share) having done
work in that world and been successful.”
LaunchPad
clients may be working through their financial models, and the incubator
connections can introduce them to local sources of funding, he said. “They may
need seven figures, then we can reach outside of the state.” He said LaunchPad
also works with the angel-fund network and individual investors in Bozeman.
Angel funds exist in most states as a pool of funding contributed by private
investors. Kalispell-based Frontier Angel Fund aims to help companies in
Montana and the Inland Pacific Northwest.
The
Blackstone money infusion will be used to “spin up” the LaunchPad, Irizaary
said. Some of that will go to salaries, and some will pay for activities such
as events where expert speakers will appear or for start up weekend events on
the MSU campus. “Our mission is to become self-sustaining.”
From Great Falls Tribune
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