Business Incubators are listed alphabetically below.

For Profit Business Incubators are privately funded and managed. They provide office space, office furniture, phone systems, and clerical staffing as well as mentoring, access to capital, and other assistance to those companies who are accepted. Their objective is to accelerate the time it takes to get a company's products or services to market, many times in less than 6 months, and often in no more than 90 days. And of course, make the incubator a tidy profit. Private Incubators have been founded by venture capital companies, entrepreneurs, and corporations.

Some private incubators require the entrepreneur to physically relocate their company to the incubator's offices, while others don't.

Private Incubator fees can include a monthly service fee for telephone, computer usage, office space, and administrative services, as well as fees for professional assistance. The Incubator company will also often take an ownership position in each company it hosts.

An advantage of the incubator is that often member companies can take advantage of professionals, such as attorneys, accounting firms, marketing firms and others who are willing to either provide their services at a discount rate or, more likely, for an equity share.

Another advantage is that if the Incubator has a positive track record of hatching successful companies, there may be a bit of a halo effect generated to new member companies. In other words, when the new member company is ready for an IPO or for a significant infusion of venture capital, it benefits from the success of the companies before it.

Many of the private for profit incubators accept outside investors.

Pseudo-incubators

There are consulting firms who present themselves as "pseudo-incubators". They provide services to help entrepreneurs that are similar to a real incubator. They find the capital, legal help, accounting services,etc, and perhaps even put together a business plan.

The fees can include an up-front or retainer of several thousand dollars plus a share of ownership in the company AND a percentage of the capital raised.

There is nothing wrong with a consulting firm providing these services or charging those fees. The problem is that a few position themselves as legitimate incubators and they're really not.

Private Incubators in Alphabetical Order

Cambridge IncubatorBusinesses must be an e-business concept with a transactional element, startup seed stage which means a pre-financing valuation less than $5 million, a product/service that can be in beta release within a few months and must relocate to Cambridge Incubator, located on the edge of the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA?

Ecompanies founded by Sky Dayton and Jake Winebaum in May of 1999 is located in Santa Monica, California. Ecompanies concentrates on web based start-ups. Companies don't have to relocte to Santa Monica. You can submit your idea or company through their web site.

HOTVentures is an investor and advisor to technology companies located in Arizona. Our portfolio consists mostly of early-stage companies, and we've served as advisor to several of the nation's largest media companies. HOTventures is a catalyst and sometimes the pivotal element in our portfolio companies getting traction.

Idealab is probably one of the original Internet Incubators. It was founded by Bill Gross in 1996. Currently there are 50 companies under various stages of incubation. Idealab is headquartered in Pasadena, (southern) California and has additional offices in Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley. The bad news is according to their web site they are not currently accepting new companies. The good news is that the venture capital company affiliated with Idealab Capital Partners www.icp.com will review new companies for potential investment.

I-Hatch founded in February of 1999, by Chip Austin, Brad Farkas and Derek Reisfield, focuses on early-stage Internet companies located in the Northeastern U.S. in e-commerce, new media content, web-enabling technology, network infrastructure and Internet services. Provides seed financing. You can submit an executive summary of your business plan through their web site.

Think Tank.com founded by Scott Blum in 1999. Not much is included about their company preferences, how they work, or what services they provide.