About

Scott Technology Center exists to help both new and established companies grow and develop, discover new talent, and come together for the betterment of both their businesses and the community as a whole.

The Scott Technology Center Incubator program provides technology startups an evidence-based approach to building their businesses. We guide them to work toward understanding the validated market problem, as well as the customer segment of their buyers. Our goal is to help startups achieve a validated solution prior to allocating significant resources, ultimately ensuring their business model is a viable one.

Once a startup has found their product’s market fit and the discovery phase is complete, our work is not done. We stay by their side all the way through to execution.

In the Scott Technology Center Incubator program, we encourage entrepreneurs to use data – not blind faith – to drive decisions, which helps them lower risk. The process encourages participants to acknowledge the unknowns, develop a hypothesis to probe the unknowns, measure and validate, then repeat through execution.

LEAN LAUNCHPAD

The Scott Technology Center is part of the Aksarben Innovation Initiative, a collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Maverick Innovations and Jim Young Jr., co-founder of the Aksarben Discovery Fund and member of the Nebraska Angels.

The Aksarben Innovation Initiative utilizes the Lean LaunchPad program, which was developed by Stanford professor and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. The program focuses on determining the market viability of a concept prior to product development and helps startups to stay accountable, track progress, and validate results.

Lean LaunchPad is currently used by entrepreneurs and innovators around the world, as well as U.S. government agencies like the National Science Foundation. Many corporations also use this process internally, as it provides detailed documentation of progress, not just biased feedback.

SUPPORTING SUCCESS

Ultimately, our goal is to help companies go from startup to success, and it works. One of our very first incubator projects, Omaha-based online auction company Proxibid, now employs more than 150 people.

In 2011, Scott Technology Center sponsored its first lean startup workshop, introducing the local community to the evidence-based startup approach. Since then, we’ve helped startups use lean methodology to turn ideas into thriving businesses, while limiting the risk of failure. Currently, we have eight cohorts participating in the evidence-based/lean startup model. We also have two corporate-requested innovation efforts underway.

INVESTING IN STARTUPS

We’ve also invested in our startups and helped them earn third-party funding.

We’ve built two early-stage investment funds: the National Innovation Fund in 2010 and the Aksarben Discovery Fund in 2015. Three incubator companies have been awarded State of Nebraska Prototype Grants. Five incubator companies have been awarded National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grants.

Our commitment to helping technology startups succeed dates back to 2002, and we remain committed to growing Omaha’s technology footprint. In fact, we recently remodeled our facilities so we can promote greater collaboration and programmatic execution.