The key to incubation success is the business building process

Softstart, the ICT business and technology incubator based on the CSIR campus in Tshwane, has released two important resources to aid entrepreneurs in creating high-potential businesses.

The first resource is the Softstart Business Building Site, an online resource that embodies a comprehensive business building process in a series of self-evaluated steps, as well as pointers to resources that can help the business through each stage in its development.

The second key resource is the Softstart Tenant Toolkit, containing a complete set of resources required to establish and enhance the operational capacity of the new business.

A business incubator, as defined by the National Business Incubation Association in the US, is not just a building in which new entrepreneurs enjoy an initial safe haven from commercial pressures: it is a complete business support process that accelerates the successful development of start-up and fledgling companies by providing entrepreneurs with an array of targeted resources and services.

At Softstart, these support services are orchestrated by the Incubator's staff and network of partners. The Softstart Business Building Site provides an online guidance and measurement solution that allows venture coaches and incubator tenants to work together in a structured, milestone-driven approach. The business building process identifies the steps to be taken in order to successfully complete the stages identified on the growth path of a typical hi-tech company.

Critical to the success of an incubator is the provision of management guidance, technical assistance and mentoring tailored to young growing companies. Steps and task items in the Softstart Business Building Site allow coaches and companies to keep an eye on an evolving set of growth and development goals while dealing with daily business and technology development issues. The Business Building Site organises the business building process into four categories, namely the technical, marketing, strategy and operational streams.

The model applied to a particular tenant company depends on the nature of the specific business, the technology and the business model chosen. Senior Technology Coach at Softstart, Andr'e van Rensburg, says: "A pre-packaged desktop software product, for example, will have a different business building model to a company offering services over the Internet. The Business Building Site allows coaches and tenants to choose business model elements from a library of templates and include these in their own unique business building programme (BBP). The Business Building Site software then maintains a complete view of the company's progress through their business building process. It also helps coaches to track a tenant's progress by adding comments, checking milestones, assigning resources as may be required, and more."

Every new business faces a long and involved process of building its operation capacity alongside other streams such as developing the products and markets. Operational capacity building is often uncharted territory for the average hi-tech entrepreneur - who is more likely to have come from a technical rather than a managerial background. The newly developed Softstart Tenant Toolkit, which forms part of the operational stream of the BBP, supplies all the necessary information required to successfully register a venture and to be legally compliant.

Softstart Operations Manager Leonie Greyling says: "This unfamiliar territory presents entrepreneurs with many challenges. Should the venture be registered as a partnership, a closed corporation or a private company? What is the difference between these legal structures? Does one need to register for company and employer tax? When does one need to register for value added tax? Once all these questions are answered, where does one find the necessary documentation and how does one go about kick-starting the registration process?"

Greyling continues: "This is where the Softstart Tenant Toolkit comes to the rescue. Because of the toolkit, Softstart tenants will henceforth find the company-registration minefield a lot easier to negotiate."

Although the Business Building Site will undergo continuous improvement with many more exciting features in the pipeline, Softstart is already excited about the value it brings in terms of the quality of coaching and guidance offered to tenant companies. Softstart CEO Ben Zaaiman explains: "Our incubator tenants have the potential to create wealth and jobs, commercialise new technologies, revitalise neighbourhoods, and strengthen local and national economies. We make every effort to ensure businesses that enter the Softstart incubator graduate to fulfil these goals in the shortest time necessary. These online resources capture the knowledge of the venture coaches and allows us to scale up for the next iteration of the incubator's growth."

Softstart is a successful and groundbreaking business and technology incubator that assists early stage ICT entrepreneurs to grow sustainable businesses. Softstart's founders include inter alia, the CSIR, University of Pretoria and the Tshwane University of Technology, and is supported by the GODISA Trust of the Departments of Science and Technology and Trade and Industry.