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What services should a software-oriented business incubator offer? (E.g., high speed internet, etc.)

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Can you explain what you mean by "incubator"? Do you mean something like Tech Stars/YCombinator, or just a common/shared office? This question is also a bit vague. It might be best if you re-phrased it to give it a little more focus and present a real-world issue rather than a hypothetical question that is just a poll. – TimJ May 29 '12 at 20:54
I'm now a IT administrator for a startup incubator, and my list is still there. I'm expanding on it a little bit, but it's mostly the same. – jrg Oct 17 '12 at 0:31

1 Answer

This is incredibly broad. However, here is kind of my 'bucket list' of stuff:

  • Fast internet.

  • Private areas for phone/skype calls, one on ones, etc.

  • Location location location. Needs to be near a cafe, pizza shop and bus line/rapid. Being downtown isn't 'necessary', and in fact could do more harm than good.

  • 'war room' style office space seems to work well.

  • Flexibility. If a company wants cubes instead of a war room (or whatever), then they should be able to provide that.

  • Meeting space. In addition to the second point, you probably should look for a meeting space for say, 5-12+ people so you can have 'team meetings', meetings with investors etc. But again, it isn't about meetings, it about getting work done.

  • Tech incubator specific stuff:

    • Access to a data center, a deal with RackSpace/AWS/someone else, and if they could have a rack on site for testing and development stuff, that's even better.

    • NAS stuff - onsite storage. -Printers. I spent the majority of my time at the incubator fighting the printers. They are important Important enough that I get paid to do it.

    • QuickBooks - companies can hire an hour or two a month of an accountant to keep the books in shape.

Again, this is a very open-ended question, but that's my bucket list.

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