Page 70 - Innovation Delaware 2019

ACCELERATORS, INCUBATORS, CO-WORKING SPACES
Finding the right place to grow is easy in Delaware
BY ROGER MORRIS AND MATT WARD
Across the First State’s tech scene, incubators, accel- erators and co-working spaces are opening doors for entrepreneurs, providing access to lab equipment, making connections between startups and investors, and helping young companies hone their business plans.
DELAWARE TECHNOLOGY PARK Providing the right space for innovate ideas to flourish is like providing soil for
flowers to take root. Seen in that light, Mike Bowman has been Delaware’s master gardener of entrepreneurial businesses for the past two decades.
Sitting in his office at Delaware Technology Park (DTP) the former
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DuPont executive says, “There is no one cookie-cutter model for success. During the last 25 years, about 150 companies have been at the park. Some have signed on with venture capital firms, some have gone public, some are still here.” The park, located in the southeast corner of Newark, opened its door to its first tenant in 1992, and in 2016 it expanded to the University of Delaware’s STAR campus — DTP@ STAR — to provide incubation facilities.
“There is a tremendous need for wet labs for new companies, so we had 14 companies already signed up on the day we cut the ribbon at STAR,” Bowman says. (A wet lab is a lab space designed with special safeguards to prevent or mitigate spills of hazardous substances.)
The attraction at both venues is cheap and efficient space. As a nonprofit that took over real estate once owned by DuPont, DTP offers lower overhead than most offices and labs in commer- cial spaces. Additionally, the facilities at STAR were designed efficiently so as to be shared as much as possible.
As the innovation community in Delaware is very tight-knit, Bowman
also aids companies in finding grants and investors. “We help them write grants for federal agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation,” he says, and he also often connects them with angel or series A investors. “The hardest are the ones that come out of the univer- sity with a great idea but no business