A Tale of Two Incubators, or Entrepreneurial Phun in Philly

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I spent the day with a bunch of cool companies at two start-up incubators here in Philadelphia. Yes, that's right, Philadelphia, home of the original American entrepreneur Ben Franklin.

The first incubator, now in its second season, was DreamIt Ventures. Today was "Demo Day," where this year's cohort, including postling, parse.ly, and kidzillions presented to a group of investors. This was the culmination of their three-month business development program under the tutelage of mentors from the Greater Philadelphia start-up scene and guest speakers from around the country like Howard Lindzon and Brad Feld.

The second, was GoodCompany Ventures, the social enteprise incubator launched this year. Today's session at GoodCompany was a dress rehearsal for the entrepreneurs in advance of their own day of presentations to investors to be held next month. I was one of the judges working with two of the companies, BlackGold Biofuels and BLOX, to refine their pitch.

A fantastic group of companies from the region and outside participated in both programs this summer, proving once again that Philly is a good place to launch a start-up.

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On Learning to Fail Fast

The best advice I've heard all week? Learn to fail fast.

A couple of weeks ago, in this blog I was wrestling with the question of whether my idea for a green investing platform was a failure or not.

After a few conversations with advisory board members and investors, I realized that I need to give myself permission to declare this idea a failure -- for now -- and move on. Why?

Everyone I talked to says the investing climate is the worst they've ever seen. Deals are taking longer, money is staying on the sidelines, and valuations are completely out of whack.

As I understand it, deals that took two months are now taking six or nine, while many investors play a waiting game. This just exacerbates the slowing rate at which deals can get done and makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to close deals.

And for an idea like mine, which is really still in its infancy, the current climate makes it nearly impossible to get the jump start it needs.

Then I came across Brad Feld's post of a couple of nights ago, on Mark Pincus and the concept of failing fast.

If you haven't read this piece or watched Pincus's interview on Vator.tv, do yourself a favor and go do so now.

It doesn't matter whether you are working on a start-up, a business unit in a big company, a social enterprise, or developing a product, the advice is golden: learn to fail fast and learn from the experience.

I'll be back with another idea and will be, as Feld says in his post, "super-extraordinary-amazingly hungry for a success."

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