With two incubators scheduled to open in Harlem and another hoping to join them, Manhattan’s high-tech wave might be making its way uptown.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced in November that the city would be accepting proposals from businesses looking to move to 125th Street, particularly startups in technology and new media. The EDC is expected to announce the winning proposals by the end of the month, and IncubateNYC co-founder Marcus Mayo is waiting to find out if his company’s proposal will be among them.
In general, an incubator is a business that gives entrepreneurs the space and resources to get their own businesses off the ground. Mayo, though, said that IncubateNYC, a technology incubator, is unique.
Most incubators, he said, provide entrepreneurs with support and then back away. He explained that his company wants to solve specific problems and seeks out businesses that it thinks can help solve those problems.
“It’s different than a traditional incubator, where you accept applications and people apply directly and then you just select people based off of whatever criteria,” Mayo said. “We’re trying to solve real issues.”
One of IncubateNYC’s goals, he noted, is to create technology that can provide more affordable and accessible health care.
“It’s the overall concept of identifying the issues that matter and finding people who are solving those issues through great products,” he said.
Incubators can be privately funded or can work in a partnership with other businesses, as IncubateNYC has with companies like Startup Weekend and Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs.
If selected by the EDC, IncubateNYC could join Bloomberg’s citywide incubator program, which aims to elevate entrepreneurship, especially in economically disadvantaged communities like Harlem. This could give the company the ability to expand throughout the city.
Jump-starting NYC’s high-tech industry has been one of Bloomberg’s biggest projects. Last December, he announced that Cornell University would be given $100 million to build an applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island and that Facebook would be opening an engineering office in the city.
“In these challenging economic times, we must find innovative ways to create jobs and stimulate growth in the private sector,” New York City Council member Inez Dickens said in a statement. “The incubator concept can achieve these objectives.”
Two incubators are scheduled to open in Harlem—one on 125th Street and one at a location that has yet to be announced.
But not everyone is confident that these companies will benefit those who need economic help the most. Savona Bailey-McClain, the chair of Community Board 9’s economic development committee, expressed concern about the locations of the incubators, wondering specifically whether they will benefit West and East Harlem.
“The two ends tend to be neglected at times,” Bailey-McClain said. “And the bulk of resources coming north pour into Central Harlem first ... Politically, the power is in Central Harlem, and folks naturally want to be connected to that power.”
Mayo believes that incubators will help solve many economic problems in the city. He added that IncubateNYC hopes to expand to other cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C.
“Our model takes a lot of tenets from the incubator and accelerator models and really changed it and molded it to what we thought Harlem would need,” Mayo said. “And that’s an institution that brings intelligent people together to solve problems with the help of corporations.”
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