Catalyzing Entrepreneurs - Early Stage Incubators

A recent post on Techcrunch, "TechStars: Summer Camp (and cash) For Entrepreneurs," caught my attention -- recently, there's  been a wave of venture capitalists reaching out to help early stage entrepreneurs. And by "early stage," we're talking people who haven't even really got a business plan together yet. I am a big fan of this, and have my own idea for such an undertaking, which I will get to in a later post. In the meantime, the field is getting interesting. The new incubator Techstars is collecting applications for a 3-month summer camp in Boulder, CO where winners will (the plan is to choose 10 applications) band together with mentors and $15,000 in seed funding to try to turn their ideas into a reality.

While it's almost grounds for a good reality TV show, in truth, it's a great idea. I believe one of the hardest parts of leveraging a great idea is actually taking the risk to put aside your other priorities and jump in headfirst. There are a few other players in this space, including:

• Y Combinator - recently launched companies like Reddit (bought by Conde Nast) and JotSpot (bought by Google), but for hundreds of thousands, not millions. More details on them over at Techcrunch.
• Charles River Ventures - CRV's new QuickStart initiative aims to open up a new market for this larger incubator and VC firm, with the motivation that it is going to be less up-front risk (and potentially higher ROI) to get in at this level.

Business practices aside, I think that this mindset among the angel investors will help motivate more budding entrepreneurs to take a crack at their ideas, rather than fall into the traditional corporate mold that often sucks in newly minted graduates -- myself included!