Frequently Asked Questions

Does Start Garden fund ideas with $5,000?

Not anymore. In our first three years, we took idea submissions through startgarden.com and selected one per week for a $5,000 investment. We stopped operating that program in February 2015.

However, Start Garden administers a regional pitch competition called 5×5 Night, which awards $5,000 grants to winners each month. If you have an idea and need a little cash to experiment with, submit it to 5x5night.com.

Does Start Garden run an Incubator?

Our version of an incubator is the “neighborhood” we’ve created within the Start Garden Space located at 2 Fulton in downtown Grand Rapids. The Space is the Grand Rapids SmartZone coworking environment for the community around high-tech/high-growth startups.

Startups have a huge hill to climb. The space is meant to surround them with fellow entrepreneurs, investors and service providers that work with a lot of startups and to be that additional team member (or two) that you really need when you’re getting started.

The space was designed to encourage flexible access to collaboration with fellow entrepreneurs while still allowing privacy for larger teams to create a culture of their own.