THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508180001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The numbers for the Old Dominion University Entrepreneurial Center are impressive, as the school works to be an economic engine for Hampton Roads.
The Entreprenurial Center provides research and expert advice to high-growth and high-tech Virginia businesses, mostly in this area, and helps entrepreneurs find start-up money.
The more than 100 new or fast-growing private businesses the Center has assisted since 1988 have annual salaries totaling $30 million and annual gross incomes totaling more than $1 billion. More than $50 million has been invested in businesses the Center has assisted.
The numbers are that big because local business people, most themselves entrepreneurs, have contributed more than 10,000 hours of service to the Center over its seven years. Those are business people, an average of 40 a year, who are repaying a community that has been good to them.
Each year the Center receives about 800 inquiries for assistance. It refers about 700 to other agencies or private providers and analyzes about 100 projects per year. It annually develops written contracts for about 20 projects. The Center receives $50 to $75 an hour for its work launching a company, but only if certain goals are achieved. If the project gets nowhere, the help is free.
The Center's director, Dennis Ackerman, has a background as an entrepreneur. He tells callers with bad ideas why their ideas won't work, and he tells callers with good ideas why their ideas might work and how the Center can help. Among other things, the Center will assist in drawing up a workable plan for launching a company.
Often a would-be entrepreneur with a good idea will be experienced in one area, say marketing, but inexperienced in another, say engineering. The Entrepreneurial Center will enlist the help of ODU professors and graduate students to fill in gaps. One example: Faculty and students at the ODU Technology Applications Center make prototypes for envisioned products and test and improve them.
The Center exists to transform good ideas into companies that pay taxes and employ lots of workers and grow.
``Conservatively,'' says ODU, ``the Center's efforts have helped save or produce over $3 million in annual taxes since 1988 and directly created or saved at least 1,000 jobs.''
Part of launching a company is finding money. Ackerman keeps a list of possible investors, and the Entrepreneurial Center recently helped launch the Small Business Development Center, now run by the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. That center uses computerized lists to match investors with companies.
Also, the Entrepreneurial Center recently helped launch the Eastern Virginia Small Business Investment Corporation, a venture-capital corporation. Already, $5 million has been committed from 57 investors, including some local governments. The investment corporation will be separate from, but work closely with, the Entrepreneurial Center.
Each semester, Ackerman works with 10 to 12 business graduate students on entrepreneurs' ideas. Students in such other disciplines as engineering, physics, and computer science also become involved in projects. The students get real-world experience - with dollars on the line.
The Entrepreneurial Center has an annual budget of only $200,000. Fifty-five percent of that comes from fees and donations. The rest comes from the state-supported Virginia Center for Innovative Technology, which is in Herndon.
When a good idea, unsupported, gets nowhere, the whole community loses. When a good idea, properly nurtured, sprouts into a tax-paying company, the whole community wins.
For the past seven years, the Entrepreneurial Center has helped the whole community win. Moving into the high-tech 21st century, the Center will become all the more important.
It is another reason to support higher education. by CNB