As Stamford establishes a business incubator for digital media startups, Norwalk has yet to reveal any plans for its own incubator nine months after commissioning a study on the feasibility of such a facility.
The Stamford incubator is in the city”™s Old Town Hall and organizers hope it will be closely linked to emerging digital media curricula at the University of Connecticut Stamford campus a few blocks away. Earlier this summer, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a bill to provide funding for a UConn Tech Park at the university”™s flagship campus in Storrs. UConn also has an incubator in Farmington for life sciences startups.
In the past year, Bridgeport has seen the birth of its own CTech IncUBator at the University of Bridgeport, whose half-dozen tenants today include Brain Tunnelgenix Technologies Corp. The Yale University spinout is developing ways to measure human brain and core temperatures continuously and non-invasively, much as doctors track heart and respiratory rates.
The incubator efforts have spawned even as Connecticut began to see results from an angel investor tax credit meant to draw wealthy individuals to invest in startups at the earliest stage of creation. To date, more than 15 Fairfield County startups have qualified for funding under the program, with Westport-based Thetis Pharmaceuticals only last month revealing it had raised $1.5 million in venture and angel funding to develop diabetes drugs.
The Connecticut Business Incubator Network currently lists no other member organizations in Fairfield County. In a 2010 study of 10 facilities statewide, CBIN reported that the state had at that point some 60 startup tenants employing just over 250 people, and representing an occupancy rate of 80 percent on the state”™s inventory of about 100,000 square feet of space reserved for incubator companies.
Those tenants produced $14.4 million in revenue last year, not including another $7.3 million in the form of grants, equity and debt raised by startups. Of just over 20 startups that left Connecticut incubators in 2010, CBIN indicated eight represented successful “graduates,” with five more closing their businesses and the remainder withdrawing from the programs for varying reasons.
The city commissioned a study delivered last January by Ohio-based Strategic Development Services (SDS), assessing whether an incubator could operate in Norwalk while being financial self-sustainable.
At deadline, an official with the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency had yet to provide an update on whether the city plans to push ahead with an incubator.
It is not as if Norwalk is looking for a pulse when it comes to high-tech companies with high-growth potential ”“ startups include HealthFleet Inc., whose online health and fitness assessment and coaching platform is currently enrolling beta-test participants; MedAdherance L.L.C., which helps health-care companies ensure patients are following their prescribed therapies; and Zadspace Inc., which offers to slap ads on shipping labels as a marketing platform.
And Norwalk obviously does not lack for entrepreneurial success stories, with recent examples including: Bear Naked Granola, acquired in 2007 by Kellogg; Webloyalty Inc., which offers affinity-marketing programs; and Kayak.com Inc., a travel search engine that filed this year for an initial public offering of stock.
