Marketplace for Innovation Centres and Incubators

1. Marketplace focussed on matching experts & mentors: Why register on only one camp, when you can subscribe to many? This marketplace allows parents to register their children on a # of camps per month for a subscription fee. And each month, the parent can choose from a wide variety of programs including videos to expose their kids to a lot of different things and to help them find their passion. The videos can be typically two to six minutes long and cover a wide range of activities such as magic tricks, sports drills, arts and crafts projects, performing arts, and outdoor skills.

2. Marketplace to connect with potential customers:The innovation centres are the first ambassadors of the local startup community. And a good incubator or an accelerator will have programs to connect and match with the first potential early customers. This marketplace platform will take away the manual process or traditional approach to connect its members to the potential customers. The marketplace will showcase the member companies and market their product/services to the local community or to validate their market-fit. What better way to support your local economy by being their early adopters/promoters. The platform will supplement the current word-of-mouth approach to connect companies to more formal and structured ways to promote the local start-ups.

3. Marketplace to connect with potential partners/investors: The accelerators and incubators are exploring new ways to support the early startup’s scale and grow. Unlike early startups exploring or validating product-market fit, in order to scale, companies need a strong partnership with and the right investors. There are so many investors interested in specific product development and always looking for early seed startups to invest in and the marketplace platform that makes it easy for the investors and partners to assess the member companies will equally support the startups to work with a credible partner/investor.

The financial crisis, economic recession, and the pandemic has led to high unemployment figures, forcing researchers and governments to focus their attention on the process of job creation. Studies have shown that new businesses such as startups create the majority of the net jobs compared to the established companies. However, the same studies have also found that 90% of the early-start-ups fail during their first 2 years due to some very obvious reasons, such as lack of problem-solution fit, product-market fit, developing a business model or creating a minimum viable product (MVP). 

There are so many incubators and accelerators that have good intentions to support the startups. In order to differentiate their values and benefits, it is important these organizations should start investing in these innovative marketplaces that will reduce the failure rates of the startups and make expertise and funds accessible to ensure the success of startup companies.