Minc, the Malmö based incubator, announced that they plan on opening up more work spaces for entrepreneurs.
“There is currently no stage for early entrepreneurs in Malmö. We get 200 applications per year to our incubator, but we only manage to accept about ten each year. What happens to the rest? We do not know.” said Mårten Öbrink, Minc’s, still relatively new CEO, to Sydsvenskan.
The initiative has been dubbed Startup-labs, a meeting place for future startups, and the inauguration will take place on the 24th of September – without any special fanfare.
The initiative has no separate funding so far, but is run at the expense of Minc’s office space. The purpose of Startup-labs is to get a larger influx of ideas to Minc:
“Minc is much more than an incubator, it is a meeting place for business, entrepreneurs and academia. We want more ideas and greater flow of entrepreneurs, so we need to give them a place to find each other and work together”
With Startup-labs Minc joins CSE’s CSE Labs and THINK’s preTHINK, two incubators in the region who also offer a “free to try an idea” office spaces for entrepreneurs. It is a great way of enabling more to try out their ideas and capabilities, which can be especially good in environments like Minc where they are surrounded by more experienced entrepreneurs and business consultants. A lot of knowledge can be shared and new ideas developed this way.
Sydsvenskan also reports that Startup-labs is not the only initiative that is new at Minc this fall. September also marks the beginning of a new concept called Minc Meetings – a sort of mini-conferences and events that Minc will facilitate.
“The idea is that the startups themselves should stand for the content and make suggestions on who they would like to come. In time we hope to host small meetings to take place several times a week and larger ones with several hundred people every quarter.” said Mårten Öbrink.
“Our aim is to get a “pay-it-forward” mentality going, where startups open up their own expertise and share it with others at Minc.” he continued.
This sound great, more sharing and more events, especially if those are themed or niched are welcome and can contribute a lot to the scene. Although: we hope that the sharing does not stop outside Minc’s walls, so that everyone interested is welcome in taking part of the knowledge exchanges.
