Get The Answers: Help is available for entrepreneurs to get started

Ken Erskine. Photo / Supplied

Ventures include eco-friendly toilets and board games, writes Ken Erskine, director of start-ups at the Icehouse.

For the entrepreneurs of start-up companies around the country, there are business incubators on hand that can help novices make a go of their first enterprise, giving them the business contacts and practical knowledge to set them on their way.

How many companies come to you every year with their new ideas?

We receive hundreds of inquiries each year. Last year we received more than 150 inquiries from business start-ups about working with the Icehouse.

From these inquiries we selected 25 entrepreneurs or businesses to work with. During the past year five businesses successfully exited.

Since our inception in 2001 we have worked with thousands of entrepreneurs and have 80 graduate companies, employing more than 600 staff, generating revenues of more than $50 million of which 90 per cent is from export income.

What is your criteria in accepting a young business?

Our selection process includes a formal application that details the market, product or service, perceived competition, funding requirements and an idea of what areas the entrepreneur thinks help is most needed.

After an application is received we will typically meet the entrepreneur and their team, where they will present their business idea, and a team from the Icehouse will review their application.

We look for a number of things in the companies that we work with:

* Can the entrepreneur be coached, that is do we think we can help?
* Is the idea or venture something new that we believe is scalable locally and internationally?
* Does the entrepreneur have some sort of relevant experience in the associated market or technology, and do we have team members with relevant experience who are able to assist?
* Does the entrepreneur have enough funding to get the idea to a level where it is either investable or self-sustaining?

Generally we focus on technology-based start-ups, but not exclusively.

At the moment our clients include ventures from eco-friendly toilets to board games.

What is your role as a business incubator? Do you ever put companies together?

Our goal is to accelerate the success of a new venture to make it as successful as it can be, as quickly as is practical.

Success can also, through market validation, establish that time and effort are better spent elsewhere, for instance, there may be no identifiable market available with which the business can be profitably established.

It is better to get out quickly than to labour on with a venture that has few or no customers or any prospect of achieving the founder's goals.

We rarely put companies together, but we do assist with the development of the business team that can include advisory boards and to connect entrepreneurs with leaders or experts in their market.

What are the experiences of start-up businesses that don't go through a business incubator?

Without experienced professional help it is, at best, likely to take longer and cost more to achieve success and at worst true potential could never be realised.

On a daily basis I see so many examples of where shared experience can save common mistakes being repeated. According to Wikipedia, "Historically, 87 per cent of incubator graduates stay in business" and experience at the Icehouse certainly suggests that ventures that have been in incubation between 12 and 24 months appear to have a faster growth trajectory than companies that we see growing organically outside.

Success is not guaranteed - it is harder to achieve than a new entrepreneur would ever imagine. That's where a good business incubator can really help.