About Us

Fertilizing the Windsor-Essex Community 

What is a "virtual incubator"? How is it different from the traditional bricks-and-mortar business incubator model? With a physical location traditional incubators house potential high-yield ventures on site and offer both shared services and mentorship. A virtual model, on the other hand, has no physical space limitations and tends to focus more on the mentorship service aspect. It is the difference  between planting several seeds and nurturing their growth versus fertilizing a whole field in order to raise yeilds. The primary goal of our Virtual Incubator is to raise the yeild of new firm formation and existing firm success within the Windsor-Essex region. Our "3F Strategy" is designed to do just that.

F1- Facilitation

Anybody who has been in business for any period of time quickly becomes an expert in some aspects of business performance be it marketing, raising funds, hiring, firing, tax issues, cross-border issues, etc. It is a fact that nobody can be an expert in all things. As such, we offer a forum where you can ask a question of the broader business community and someone with the expertise (or many someones) can supply an answer or opinion. It is our hope that you can do the same for others within your area of expertise. This type of social interaction is known as crowd-sourcing. We all have different experiences and information and it would be arrogant to think one person could have all the answers. As such it is often more productive to solicit responses from the crowd rather than the individual.

F2- Future Orientation

Conventional wisdom on planning and strategy suggests that businesses need to respond to their environment. While true in a broad sense, it is the future environment that is most critical in planning and strategy, not the current one. We have introduced a bi-monthly newsletter written by Mark Meldrum that will focus solely on future trends that will affect the Windsor-Essex region. When you respond too well to the current environment coming trends that are a threat to that environment are then seen as a threat to your business. However once you begin to respond to coming trends that were once seen as threats become opportunities. The "OPTIC Vision" will help with this. The Vision is FREE and is available for download on our website.

F3- Formation

The lone entrepreneur is a myth! The most critical component of successful businesses is great teams. Much as you cannot be an expert at everything, you also cannot do everything. Businesses that have well-balanced teams have a much higher probability of actually achieving their goals. The problem comes in finding the right people. Many entrepreneurs lack the requisite social network (who you know, and more importantly, who knows you!) and/or lack the skills necessary to assist them in forming great teams that can actually execute on the plan. Our on-line application called 'TeamBuilder' was designed by a University of Windsor Computer Science PhD candidate. TeamBuilder will not only attempt to match teams with complementary skills but also with complementary personalities. A cohesive team is an effective team. With the aid of TeamBuilder, entrepreneurs and professionals can BUILD and JOIN teams.