"It's astounding when you think about it-five funds trying to raise money at the same time, when our kind of money is very scarce in the Midwest," says Brian Clevinger, managing director of Prolog Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm set up to invest in companies nurtured by the St. Louis incubators. "The synergy here in St. Louis suggests we all believe that something amazing is going on." A few years back, few venture capitalists focused their radar screens on St. Louis, even though area employers spend $2 billion annually on research and development. But the Midwestern city has redrawn the venture capital map in recent years thanks in part to an old idea--business incubation.
Incubators encourage scientists to take their dreams to the market by providing them a hub of new facilities equipped with state-of-the-art research laboratories and networks of experts to help develop business models. Incubator organizers increasingly ...
