The new business incubator at York College of Pennsylvania isn’t just a building, even though the new 9,000-square foot facility comes with amenities like conference rooms and high-speed Internet access. The incubator is also a place where budding businesses can benefit from access to experts and assistance from on and off campus.
The college’s J.D. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship started in 2006 and recently moved into its new home in the business incubator. For its executive director the college hired Jeff Vermeulen, a Pennsylvania native who most recently worked at a technology business incubator at the University of South Florida Polytechnic. He is also a former president of the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce.
“I liked the idea of being able to create something,” Vermeulen says of his new post in York. He hopes to draw emerging businesses run by people who have innovative ideas and are eager to take advantage of everything the incubator has to offer. As an example he lists a council of entrepreneurs, which is made up of about a dozen local small-business representatives willing to offer their expertise.
The J.D. Brown Center also provides a small office for the Shippensburg University Small Business Development Center. And of course faculty and students from York College provide knowledge and a pool of potential interns.
The incubator has two tenants: Dataforma, which makes software for roofing contractors, and In The Spotlight Marketing, which focuses on Web and social media promotions. Students from the college are working for both. “It’s not your typical internship,” Vermeulen says. “At a company with five, six, seven, eight people, you’re really going to see the decisions being made and how they’re being made.”
Source: Jeff Vermeulen, J.D. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen
