Free is the Magic Word at EvoNexus, a New Technology Incubator
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders attended the official opening of the EvoNexus incubator and learned about six exciting start-up companies to be housed there.
Free, as in free rent, free utilities and free mentoring, is one big reason for all the interest in EvoNexus, a new technology incubator opened earlier this month in 25,000 square-feet of Sorrento Valley office space donated by Leap Wireless.
The idea behind the incubator is to ensure that the best ideas are funded and given a chance of survival in these rough financial times, said EvoNexus Executive Director Cathy Pucher. The goal is to incubate 10 to 12 companies in this facility when it is running at full capacity, Pucher said.
Among the six companies to be accepted into the incubator for its grand opening is MediPacs, a life sciences company that is developing a wireless medication pump. As a company that started in an Arizona research park incubator, the folks at MediPacs found the no-strings attached EvoNexus a great opportunity for much more than the free rent.
“Cash is precious to start-ups that want to spend it in a way that gets them closer to getting a product on the market,” said MediPacs CEO Mark McWilliams. “This extends our cash runway because there’s no lease, no IT infrastructure to create. It saves us two to three months in management costs to set everything up.”
And the incubator’s location and connections made it even more attractive.
“Our technology required wireless capability and San Diego is the cradle of that,” said Mark Banister, a company founder and its chief technology officer. But to figure out what technology would be best for MediPacs would require expertise they didn’t possess and how would they find the engineers who could direct them to the right technology?
EvoNexus helped MediPacs solve that problem. By providing free mentoring, the company knew who to call for help. And not only was their call answered, they got face time and help from people they may have never been connected with otherwise.
“If you have a good idea, this can be a very generous county,” said Julie Meier Wright, CEO of the San Diego Economic Development Corporation.
And EvoNexus plans to capitalize on that. It’s budgeted to run this first year with $300,000 cash and another $300,000 of in-kind contributions, Pucher said.
And that value of the deal was certainly not lost on the eight start-ups that applied for a spot in the incubator, including companies in biotech, clean tech and high tech, she said. Each application is judged on their product idea, the size of the market, the management team and other key factors. Companies that get a spot in the incubator won’t be allowed to stay for long, though. Once the companies start to look like they may make it, they will be shown the door to make room for other start-ups, Rory Moore, a CommNexus board member and founder of EvoNexus told Voice of San Diego.
The opening of the incubator was covered by Xconomy’s Bruce Bigelow, whose story was also published in SignonSanDiego. Voice of San Diego’s David Washburn also wrote about the incubator.
MediPacs a life sciences company developing a new drug infusion technology will have offices and lab in the incubator.
MediPacs has developed drug infusion technology that can be contained in a palm-size wireless device that would be worn on a patient’s skin and would replace syringes and intravenous bags now used to deliver medications in a clinical setting.