James Bell, MBA The first answer is pretty straight-forward for us at ZeroTo510. Get involved! Be a mentor. Come speak as a subject matter expert. Show value before asking for money, greater involvement or a board seat. Demonstrate your expertise and willingness to help. And, never forget you're dealing with startups and early stage growth companies: What works for most other companies often doesn't work for these because time isn't on their side, they don't have a lot of money to spread around, and they need to learn, create, learn again and iterate over and over again to get things right--and to do so before they run out of time and money. How can you help them successfully navigate the many obstacles they face and do so in a capital-efficient manner? Are you willing to take risks with them, and are you willing to walk side-by-side with the many that fail to get to the very few that succeed? The second answer is less clear, but here are some ways: Read, read and read some more. Find every possible resource, then look for more. Network with incubator and accelerator leadership. Network with mentors, advisers and other service providers. Be willing to help them. Recognize many of them face the same capital constraints as the startups they serve. Go to demo days. Find some gaps in information: Creatively solve those problems. Help their startups. And, we're back to the first part of the first answer: Get involved! I hope this helps.

Aaron Liang Working at a startup, I agree with several of James points. From my experience many startups don't have alot of money or resources to devote to scouting out suppliers so often they will work with those who are known to their community or often, ones who have worked with or are recommended by their consultants That being said as James mentioned, being involved in their community helps a great deal as it would raise their comfort level in any dealings that may occur which will be important as both you and them would be rather new to these initiatives. I find the medical technology incubator community to be relatively free flowing and often share ideas/discussions (within privacy and confidentiality of course) and being involved with those or reaching out to members of the community will help you stay connected with the work they are doing and how you can support it.

One note of caution being a supplier to the medical incubator community though, diversify your customers (that is already a basic principle) because more so than in normal business, startups may prove to be sporadic customers until they hit it right as James said, so you will have to ride through the cycle and be prepared to weather a few storms along the way so for yourself, it is always best to have other steady customer streams and not to be wholly reliant on startups as their business can be somewhat unpredictable, especially in the first few years.

Ee Bin Liew great and relevant comments by James and Aaron and I especially like the reminder to suppliers to diversify - that is a great point!

Cheers,
Ee Bin

Esmael Zargoushnia I have recently analyzed and certified an incubator for US and Europe. Unfortunately I can not disclose the client. What exactly is your question?

Richard Roth The question is very basic:

Pick an incubator - any incubator. If I am a vendor (in this case Hitachi Cable America at http://www.hca.hitachi-cable.com/) and I want to advertise my medical wares such as (http://www.hca.hitachi-cable.com/products/hcm/catalog/performance-cables.php) in order that the mentors are educated on various supplies so that they can in turn educate the incoming companies. How does one start quickly without conferences, networking, event dinners, etc? I simply want to educate the plethora of incubators quickly and efficiently.

I.e. is there a published AVL list for the incubator itself and then a sub-AVL list for the companies the incubator supports? Also, is there an internal directory or service guide that allows for vendors to update their goods and materials so that the training is always current.

To my understanding it is the incubators function to help support the companies in all manners of business so that they can maximize their success while minimizing the upfront risk to the investors and organizations. So having a database of suppliers seems logical but it is sounding like it just does not exist.

Esmael Zargoushnia This is a marketing issue. Unfortunately it's just not my feild.

Richard Roth What if we come at the discussion from a different direction: Let's use an example - There is an inventor. We'll call him Ezekiel Faraday. He is the creator of a novel medical device using a wide variety of electronic components, fab technologies and signaling sensors. This device has a great opportunity to save lives and reach the consumers direct. The inventor is small and heavily burdened with boot strapping his own operation for several years. Now he needs of a lab, more advanced equipment, general business support and potential funding to bring this project to viable commercialization. He has limited network access, time or reach. Let's go so far as saying he doesn't even own a suit. Where would he turn other than the universities? Is there a directory that he would be pointed to by a friend? Is there a Shark Tank of incubators that are eager to hook him? Is there a secret library in Prague that he would be casually told to visit and share the handshake? Just exactly how does this inventor find the light of day and the incubators to speak with? Or how do the incubators find him? If we start there then we can walk into the second half of the supply chain procedure. Does anyone else see this as a challenging problem or is it simply just not a topic of interest? Looking forward to any further feedback.

James Bell, MBA I'm not sure how to respond other than to say that accelerators and incubators aren't going to do the selling for you. If you're unwilling to get involved, you don't stand any chance of getting support from the medical device start up community--founders, mentors, program leadership or otherwise.

Richard Roth There is no unwillingness for involvement and no interest in others doing the selling. The interest is rather educating the groups. How can a mentor be a mentor without the knowledge base to call upon when needed. This is the crucial element of building an AVL list, but rather we should call it a "Try reaching out to this vendor list" for help. So it is quite the contrary to not being involved. Rather it is being unrepresented simply due to not being aware. So getting to the information so that one can get involved is crucial. This is a good first step even if we had to follow the process step by step. How does the poor entrepreneur go about helping himself?