Virtual Incubator Services

Many of my clients are organizations that help entrepreneurs, whether they are event managers, business plan competition organizers or managing incubators or other groups of startups. They come to me to help their clients give great pitches at their events and to improve their business plans and thereby their chances for success (and their ability to pay their bills!). My goal is to help to accelerate the benefits of your programs for you and for your clients.

Virtual Incubators provide the same marketing advantages of co-location as are found in bricks-and-mortar incubators: visitors can expect to find a diverse array of interesting startups and learn about their value propositions. In the future, we plan to add online mentors and provide special programming just for incubator members.

Virtual Incubators can be created for events, for business plan and other longer term programs, for real-world incubators, and for the portfolio clients of service providers and others. In addition, the best graduates of Plano & Simple Workshops are invited to join the Plano & Simple Virtual Incubator.

Benefits to the hosting organizations include:

• a customized URL that can be used in your marketing materials
• a customized landing page featuring a welcome by your leadership
• up to 3 additional pages of descriptions of programs, events and other special offerings you have
• your branding on every page of your incubator
• a tagged and searchable directory of your "tenants" including their:
  • 30-second written pitches
  • executive summaries
  • videos and other media (optional)
• social media marketing by Plano & Simple via blog posts, Twitter, Facebook and Google+

Benefits to the tenants include:

• a professional web presence and unique URL in addition to your website
• your logo, 30-second pitch and executive summary provided in a searchable directory
• marketing of your own company as well as your incubator via social media

Any Plano & Simple Services may be combined with our Virtual Incubator service to help market a firm, event, business competition, incubator or other collection of entrepreneurs.

Event Incubators

Event Incubators help you produce and market high-quality pitching sessions and help your entrepreneur clients to improve their pitching skills and tools. Whether for a session or an entire event, Event Accelerators are good for startups, good for your sponsors and good for you.

The impact of an Event Incubator can be raised by adding in news pages, blog posts and social media marketing, forums for your participants, a calendar of events, and many other useful options.

Business Competition Virtual Incubators

No doubt you started a Business Competition to foster exciting new ideas and help entrepreneurs - and your organization - raise their profile, grow their network and improve their business plans. No doubt you've had to coordinate large numbers of volunteers and mentors to keep the process moving and deliver the quality you envisioned at the beginning. How do I know? Because I've been there! I co-founded and then ran a major business competition for clean energy companies from 2004 through 2007 for well over a hundred entrepreneurs and dozens and dozens of volunteers and mentors. Volunteers are great, and there's no way to run a business competition without them.

But how do you get the consistency and training necessary for your competitors to take full advantage of this great opportunity you're providing to them?

Our online, virtual Business Competition Virtual Incubator is coupled with a Custom Workshop to help your entrepreneurs move ahead faster. Even if you have great volunteer mentors for your tenants, there's nothing like having the accountability and consistency that comes with deadlines. That structure is augmented by a combination of high quality instruction and coaching that will help them make significant progress in just a matter of weeks.

If your competition isn't in Boston or Silicon Valley, it may be tough to find enough quality mentors to help your competitors. The Workshop training and coaching are provided online for easy and convenient access by the entrepreneurs. Of course, in-person support can also be arranged.

At the end of the Workshop, your startups will be ready to deliver a great investor pitch session for the all-important, high profile finals of your competition. They'll be featured in their own Business Competition Incubator online so that investors and others can get excited about meeting them before the finals even take place - in fact, they may be able to attract team mates and mentors by having this raised profile. The impact of the Business Competition Virtual Incubator can be increased by adding news pages, blog posts and social media marketing, forums for your participants, a calendar of events, and many other useful capabilities.

Virtual Incubator for Real-World Incubators

Our online incubators for real-world incubators are coupled with either a Customized Workshop or Pitch Coaching to help your entrepreneurs move ahead faster. Even if you have great volunteer mentors for your tenants, there's nothing like having the accountability and consistency that comes with deadlines. That structure is augmented by a combination of high quality instruction and coaching that will help them make significant progress in just a matter of weeks.

If your incubator isn't in Boston or Silicon Valley, it may be tough to find enough quality mentors to help your tenants. The Bootcamp training and coaching are provided online for easy and convenient access by the entrepreneurs. Of course, in-person support can also be arranged.

At the end of the Workshop, your startups will be ready to deliver a great investor pitch session. They'll be featured in your Virtual Incubator online so that potential visitors can get excited about meeting your tenants before they arrive. The impact of your Virtual Incubator can be increased by adding news pages, blog posts and social media marketing, forums for your participants, a calendar of events, and many other useful capabilities.