Gov. Dannel P. Malloy”™s administration is eyeing a nascent incubator in Stamford as a model for a state-backed network of incubators, as Connecticut readies to shower millions of dollars on the startup sector.
The Stamford Innovation Center launched this past summer in the city”™s Old Town Hall as an incubator for startups and a meeting place for entrepreneurs, taking 10,000 square feet of space in the building. It was the second incubator launched in Fairfield County the past few years, after the CT IncUBator adjacent to the University of Bridgeport.
Stamford resident Kip Bergstrom has been leading the effort to establish state-run incubators, in his role as deputy commissioner in the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development.
In a jobs bill announced in mid-October, the state is cutting the minimal threshold for angel investment tax credits to $25,000, down from $100,000 today, in hopes of boosting funding for startups. More than two-dozen Fairfield County startups have already been qualified to generate the tax credits at the higher investment threshold.
Another $25 million would go toward innovation centers throughout the state to assist entrepreneurs and to a matching grant program for companies that win funding under the federal Small Business Innovation Research grant program. And the state would free up $25 million in new funding for Connecticut Innovations, a venture capital fund originally created by the state. Connecticut Innovations is expected to take the lead in financing startups that emerge from a proposed $1.1 billion genetics lab planned for Farmington by Maine-based Jackson Laboratory.
The planned funding comes on the heels of Startup America establishing a Startup Connecticut program intended to groom new companies, and as the Connecticut Technology Council held its annual Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summit and Northeast Angel Summit in New Haven last week.
“We are not generating the same level of entrepreneurial activity as some of our neighboring states,” said Catherine Smith, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, addressing legislators in October. “We”™re talking about supporting innovation through a grant to Connecticut Innovations, which will spur more economic activity by creating incubator space, by creating networks of entrepreneurs, by investing directly either through loans or equity investments.”
Smith cited Stamford, New Haven, Hartford and Storrs as the likely beneficiaries for incubator funding support.
“We already have started to work with ”¦ the Stamford incubation center,” Smith said. “The details and specifics of each of those incubator areas have not yet been completed, but I think we”™ll be modeling it off the kinds of things that we are seeing at Stamford Innovation Center. ”¦ It”™s a great opportunity for us not only to have students come in and work in startup operations, but we”™ve got a couple of companies that are interested in doing some of their R&D operations in that space as well, and they can be mentors for the new startups.”
Smith also mentioned the possibility of the state government running an “IP factory” to convince Connecticut companies to license intellectual property they do not plan to commercialize, and allow entrepreneurs to get products to market.
