Tech Incubator Boosts Blue Ridge Business
Published Mar 23, 2009
There’s no denying that many successful businesses start in attic offices and at the kitchen table.
Getting to the next level, though, takes sound advice, access to resources and sometimes just a place to work away from kids and daytime television.
Enter Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, home of a burgeoning cluster of entrepreneurs.
AB Tech offers a full-fledged business incubator for small business owners who have outgrown their living rooms but aren’t quite ready to go it alone.
“Entrepreneurship can be a pretty lonely route. Maybe you build a prototype in your garage. Maybe you work out the concept on the dining room table. In trying to figure out how to take it from that idea phase all the way to creating a business and operating, there’s a lot of things to go through,” says Betty Young, president of AB Tech. “The idea behind our business-support services and the incubator is to be able to support the entrepreneur through all of those different phases.”
In addition to standard incubator services, such as reduced-cost space, office supplies and services, and industry mentorship, AB Tech also offers specialized programs for technology businesses through the Technology Commercialization Program and culinary endeavors through Blue Ridge Food Ventures.
Roughly 35 businesses are currently housed in the school’s incubator, most of which will stay for two years before branching out to their own facilities.
“They’re in a community of other entrepreneurs who are doing the same kinds of things – maybe not the same product line or the same business ideas, but they’re all trying to start their businesses,” Young says. “So there’s a great sense of camaraderie, and you feel like you’re not really working all alone trying to get your business going.”
At its core, the AB Tech program is geared toward helping business owners avoid the pitfalls that cause so many ventures to fail, such as lack of capital or poor planning.
“It’s really about helping the business become successful,” Young says, “whatever it takes to do that.”
Story by Michaela Jackson
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