Although we make investment decisions, the ideas we invest in are so early that we mostly help you think through your next step, then connect you to the people, knowledge and resources you'll need. We're people who've started businesses or spent most of our careers in service to entrepreneurs across sectors.
A lot of incubators - or variations of the idea - have emerged in recent years to grow start up companies. Start Garden is different. Our focus is on building a great environment for back-of-the-napkin ideas to take off. Rather than incubating a certain category of startup businesses, we make a platform for ideas to discover if they'll be exciting businesses. We're looser in what we invest because leveraging the connections of a city allows us to be.
Think of it like this. Kickstarter is an excellent platform to pre-sell something - like a T-shirt - to get you over a hump. Start Garden invests incrementally to get you over a mountain.
Of course, we invest financially, even if the idea exists on the back of a napkin. But we also invest social capital (our network of business professionals) and intellectual capital (knowledge you may not even know you need yet).
