Christmas came in June this year for entrepreneurs in Music City. The Entrepreneur Center opened on June 20 in a refurbished trolley barn at the top of a hill on the edge of downtown. It is a beautiful space, well organized and smartly designed.
The Center focuses on startups in four areas: healthcare, technology, digital media and entertainment, and social enterprise. HealthBox Nashville hosted its first class of entrepreneurs in this space.
There are other accelerators there also, along with Vanderbilt University, a law firm and a venture capital group.
I visited the Center after the Healthbox Nashville Demo Day earlier this month.
Burcham was president of ParadigmHealth for seven years. He also founded Theraphysics, a venture-backed specialty healthcare firm managing rehabilitation services, and was president for 8 years.
The Center is also one of seven tech hubs in America and Canada that are part of the Google for Entrepreneurs program. Minneapolis, Chicago, Waterloo, Nashville, Durham, Denver and Detroit.
The Nashville Business Journal reported on the benefits of being a Google Tech Hub:
The Entrepreneur Center will receive some financial support from Google to offset overhead and help fund more community programs. Startups within the center will also receive discounted access to Google products, like the cloud platform, for example, and access to Google employees and other mentors.
The center started in 2007 as part of a Nashville Chamber of Commerce project. The EC opened its first office in August 2010. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the Center is funded through sponsorships, partnerships, donations and grants.
