For an incubator set on changing perceptions of where startups need to be to succeed in regulated sectors such as healthcare, education and energy, the decision to set up 1776 in Washington, D.C., was a smart move. Mentors abound in a city where lawmakers, think tanks, regulators and Fortune 500 companies come to do business. In a phone interview, co-founder Donna Harris talked to MedCity News about its approach to finding and working with startups.
Harris co-founded 1776 in 2012 with Evan Burfield. Harris had previously worked at Startup America Partnership (which later changed its name to UP America) as managing director, and before that she was vice chair of Interpoint. Burfield founded netDecide and Synteractive.
The 30,000-square-foot incubator currently houses 125 companies. But it also has a virtual program that provides access to mentors, webinars, workshops and roundtables. A network of 1776 mentors guides them through core questions with one-on-one coaching sessions. At $300 per month, it’s not cheap but it provides access and plugs participants in to a network that could prove invaluable to early-stage companies looking for industry partners for product trials and to support their business growth.
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It also formed a Startup Federation. The incubators and shared work spaces in the group allow their members to work at each other’s offices, share resources and take part in each other’s workshops to benefit their members, so there is plenty of cross-fertilization. Among its 14 participants to date are Benjamin’s Desk in Philadelphia, 1871 in Chicago, Capital Factory in Austin, INcubes in Toronto and Warner Yard in London.
“We don’t need to compete, we can be cooperative,” Harris noted. “Funding doesn’t lead companies, it follows them.”
Even so, Harris and her co-founder have been keen to extend the incubator’s reach beyond the Internet and main office through its Challenge Cup. The idea behind the annual competition is to search for meaningful technology that’s also scalable. It took the company on a road trip to 16 cities in the U.S. and overseas from Chicago to Moscow. It picked four startups from healthcare, education, environment and other areas in each city and mentored them. It set up meetings for the winners in DC to help them scale their businesses. Then they competed against each other across one week.
Next year’s Challenge Cup is poised to be even larger, but Harris said the details would come sometime after Labor Day.
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On the question of whether there can be too many incubators and accelerators in the country, Harris said it wasn’t so much about quantity as quality. “Some accelerators have phenomenal programming, but there’s a big variety in the caliber of companies participating.” Although there’s a certain amount of tracking for how much capital their accelerators’ member companies raise, there’s not much info about how successfully participants scale their businesses, whether they’re acquired or how many of the companies fail.
Companies in the technology space don’t need as much venture capital as they used to and shared work spaces/startup hubs like Benjamin’s Desk are emerging and are supporting each other. Harris said the startup hubs in the Federation help each other’s members make connections.
1776’s approach shows that the startup landscape is not only evolving but also changing our sense of how startup communities can collaborate to improve the prospects of their members.
