Giving tech startups a head start
Call it incubator lite.
A Danbury business suite operator is offering free rent over multiple months to technology-based startups, in an effort to bolster their prospects, the city”™s economic vitality, and its own visibility in the business community.
The Danbury area has no business incubator, a void Patricia Longueuil hopes to fill via the Plaza Executive Suites on Mill Plain Rd., which she manages.
The corporate Plaza Executive Suites does not offer the stately splendor of the new Stamford Innovation Center at that city”™s old town hall and its small army of advisors; or Bridgeport”™s CTIncUBator and its ties to the University of Bridgeport and Connecticut Innovations.
But Longueuil envisions a small cadre of entrepreneurs rubbing elbows with each other in a dedicated area of “the Tech Space at 100 Mill Plain Rd.,” not to mention with the larger business population at Plaza Executive Suites that numbers dozens of entities, and perhaps with other area organizations such as Western Connecticut State University. Among its degree programs are computer science and management.
Longueuil says she will do her best to help “incubator” tenants access seasoned business professionals for advice starting their companies, and hopes to further what she describes as a collegial environment at Plaza Executive Suites.
“It”™s like a little maze in here,” Longueuil said. “It”™s very interesting ”“ there have been people here since we opened in 1991.”
Plaza Executive Suites, of course, has a vested interest ”“ by signing up some entrepreneurs for short-term stints, it might be able to lock some of them in for longer ones, perhaps even a few decades as some of her existing clients have sojourned there.
Longueuil says she thinks she can accommodate up to a dozen startups for the free rent offer, depending on the size of the companies, with participants accessing the same services as existing tenants such as wireless Internet access and a receptionist.
Companies accepted into the program can get free rent for up to three months; after that, they have to reapply for another three months. Plaza Executive Suites is not offering free quarters in perpetuity ”“ just long enough to give a company a leg up, which is, after all, why incubators exist in the first place.
“We are just starting out with this,” Longueuil said. “We”™ll learn as we go along.”