Incubator Nurtures Innovative Companies
Happy Jack Software does nifty things with Web-based calendars that can keep families, sports leagues, churches and social groups in the loop.
Firehole Technologies performs fault analyses of composite materials. Medicine Bow Technologies helps health-care facilities with integration of their clinical, financial and administrative information technology.
These enterprises are among the new technology firms under the same popular roof: the Wyoming Technology Business Center, an incubator on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie that opened in October 2006.
“There are a lot of neat companies here,” says Jon Benson, the center’s chief executive officer. “We are trying to get the clients to grow and be successful. We are full, which is a good thing, but you want to keep taking clients.”
A new tenant is Pronghorn Technologies LLC, which has sensors that take continual measurements of chlorine in water and has applications for nuclear submarines, commercial shipping and municipal water systems.
For companies such as Pronghorn that are close to taking a product to market, the center offers help in developing business models, identifying potential customers and working out pricing and delivery options.
For companies that “graduate” to their own facilities, the technology center staff helps build their organizations. The center also reaches out to other companies with growing pains.
It’s got a good partner with the Wyoming Research Products Center, which is the university’s intellectual property arm but also, because of funding from the Wyoming Business Council, provides free services such as trademark and patent research to independent inventors.
Director Davona Douglass says the list of private projects showcases Wyoming’s strength – outdoor recreation, natural products for pets and clothing, organic products, energy products, wind energy, tractor parts and new ways of plowing among them.
The products center also offers outreach services and acts as a feeder for the business incubator.
“We help people build companies,” Benson says. “I need neat technology and people with fire in their bellies. (Douglass) helps steer us to those kind of folks.”
