SCC Entrepreneurship Center Incubator Opens More Space

The Southeast Community College (SCC) Entrepreneurship Center incubator program in Lincoln opened additional business incubator space May 1, 2010.

Tim Mittan, the center’s director, said expanding the incubator office space within Southeast Community College’s building at 285 S. 68th Street Place will enable the incubator to add four new tenants to its current 13.

The SCC Entrepreneurship Center opened the incubator program to tenants in 2007.

“We wanted to create a nice, safe place for businesses to get started,” Mittan said.

This year, some businesses the incubator has nurtured over the past three years are beginning to make it on their own.

Engine House Café owner Roger Pletcher graduated from the center’s virtual incubator in October 2009.

Another business, Lincoln Life Coaching Center, graduated in February 2010. Although its partners ended that business and went separate ways, one of those partners, Deb Savage, said the incubator allowed her to learn from her first business attempt without “going broke” and now start a second business.

“Because for me, at least, I’d been a nurse for 23 years when I started and lacked a lot of business knowledge and background,” she said. Savage and four other partners recently opened a new business, KNECnet d.b.a. Up With Nurses.

“I’d never have been able to do this had it not been for the incubator,” she said.

Serenity Health Massage and Meridian Consulting are slated to graduate this summer. Nebraska Air Quality Specialties is scheduled to graduate in the fall.

SCC Incubator Lobby

Mittan said he’s not sure if the owner of Meridian Consulting will be able to wait until his business’s scheduled August date to graduate. The business is growing too fast.

“He cannot grow anymore here. He has employees. They are bunched up in two small offices. He’s running out of space. He’s running out of everything,” Mittan said.

While faster-than-expected growth might require adjustments, it’s a challenge many new businesses would likely welcome.

Mittan has directed the SCC Entrepreneurship Center for four years. He had a challenge of his own to meet when the center began developing the incubator program three years ago. Three previous incubator programs in Lincoln, all run by nonprofit organizations, had failed in previous years.

Like an entrepreneur preparing to start a business, the center staff started by researching their market, looking at entrepreneurial needs in the area and examining what made other incubators successful.

Mittan said a representative from a successful Colorado State incubator gave strong advice: “‘If you don’t create an incubator that emphasizes what you do as a college,’ he said, ‘you’ll fail.’”

The SCC Entrepreneurship Center incubator program followed that advice. The program has an educational component. The incubator is designed to help practical service businesses – businesses in the same industries for which Southeast Community College provides training, like auto repair, welding, accounting, day care, and practical nursing.

Center staff found at least 85 percent of the vocational technical students said they wanted to start their own business.

However, when the incubator opened, center staff received more requests from people in the community than students to locate at the incubator. Of the current incubator tenants, only two are students, Mittan said.

“We weren’t expecting that,” Mittan said. “We thought we might have some. I didn’t realize that 95 percent othe businesses would be from the community.”

SCC Incubator Office

Despite a somewhat different clientele than the center expected, Mittan said the incubator is meeting the center’s goals. Tenants must meet educational requirements, although the requirements vary depending on each business’s needs. Participants must leave the incubator after three years.

“That makes my job harder because we have to make sure they have a solid business in three years,” he said.

Since the center and the incubator are housed in a Southeast Community College building, tenants must follow the college’s rules. Tenants cannot serve wine at business openings or open houses. On holidays and snow days when the college is closed, tenants have no receptionist or mail service.

“Following some of the college policies is a little confining for them, but I think most of them deal with it just fine,” Mittan said. Tenants do have access to the building 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so even if the building is closed, businesses can operate.

Besides constant access to the building and reception most business days, tenants get copies and faxes at an inexpensive rate, use of the shared conference room, use of classroom space if necessary, discounts on any SCC workshops (but not full-credit classes), at least three networking events per year, corporate discounts, and free access to center staff business counseling.

An onsite secretarial service is available to them part-time; the center bills the tenants back for the secretarial time they use.

SCC Incubator Tenant Conference Room

While the incubator program rent is priced to be affordable for new businesses, Mittan said tenants aren’t there for the cheap rent.

“They need the networking, they need the support, they need to know what they don’t know,” he said.

Mittan and education specialist/recruiter Linda Hartman have an “open door” policy for incubator tenants when tenants need business advice.

“They don’t have to take our advice, but we’re pretty good at what we do,” Mittan said. “We’re pretty good at business basics.”

Mittan also encourages tenants to create business agreements with each other favorable to tenants.

“This takes some of the risk off, provides them clients and creates bonds between everyone,” he said. In addition, once tenants leave the building, they still have the relationship, he said.

Incubator tenant David Hefley, owner of Meridian Consulting, said the business relationships and friendships among tenants are an important incubator benefit.

“We are able to talk among each other about the challenges small businesses face,” he said.

Mittan and Hartman interview people interested in the incubator program and request that they complete a business concept form. Depending on when a business is accepted, the business may need to wait to start the program until a directly competing business graduates or until space is available.

More information on the incubator program is available on the SCC Entrepreneurship Center Web site.