iHub survives early challenges

Last year, the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster gained new prominence when California named it one of the state's six new Innovation Hubs.

Its mission: To create jobs by coordinating regional business, education and government activities.

That goal has been elusive so far. But incubator officials — who now usually refer to the Rohnert Park business cluster as the iHub — say it has survived its early trials and is now positioned to be the job creator it set out to be, and more.

"The incubator is the platform," said Michael Newell, the iHub's executive director. "We're looking to take it bigger than that. We want to create connectivity, an innovation ecosystem."

That, he said, means a network — with the iHub at its center — of venture capital, entrepreneurs and innovative ideas that will foster companies and jobs.

Lindsay Austin, chairman of the iHub board of directors, put it another way. "Our job is to create more Steve Jobs," he said. "They are the catalysts that will create new jobs."

Newell and Austin have made promising strides to expand the iHub's reach, strengthening its ties to businesses investors and also to Sonoma State University. They also point to cluster tenants potentially verging on major success as a sign the nonprofit is starting to find its stride.

A principal of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm has joined the iHub board, and the firm pays for a course to help companies develop business plans to pitch to potential investors.

"The advantage for us is we get to see better deals," said Dan Lankford, a managing director at Wavepoint Ventures, which has offices in Menlo Park and the Sacramento area.

"I think people have gotten discouraged over the years," Lankford said, referring to the difficulties that North Bay startups have experienced trying to get investment capital. "We've kind of completed this funding chain."

Newell also has forged close ties to Sandia National Labs at Livermore, a prominent engineering and research institution.

Sandia's business development manager, Bruce Balfour, joined the iHub board last month. Balfour, who also heads iGate, the state's innovation hub in Livermore, said Sandia can provide valuable technological and engineering support to iHub companies.

And SSU's School of Business and Economics helped run the business plan competition and is increasing its involvement in the iHub, said Bill Silver, dean of the school.

The school has hired an entrepreneur-in-residence and he will join faculty and SSU students in working with incubator tenant companies, Silver said.

"This is going to help build companies and create jobs and launch opportunities in the North Bay," he said. "It's also an example of organizations in the North Bay coming together."

However, other organizations identified as iHub partners, such as the county Economic Development Board, the city of Santa Rosa and the publicly funded Small Business Development Center at Santa Rosa Junior College, have yet to get involved.

"We have not done a lot of workshops down at the cluster. They have their own workshops and we cross-promote each other's events," said Lorraine DuVernay, director of the Small Business Development Center.

Santa Rosa is listed by the iHub as a partner, but the city's economic development specialist, Nancy Manchester, said they have done little together yet.

"I'm not sure yet how that will look like," she said.

At the same time, iHub leaders say a more coordinated regional economic development plan — including the county and its cities — would support its own efforts.

"We sometimes still work in silos. I'd like to see that we're creating a shared sustained solution or approach to economic vitality," said Brenda Gilchrist, who helped start the iHub's mentoring program.

Tax incentives and streamlined business permitting processes would help, said Gilchrist, who owns HR Matrix, a human resource consulting firm in Santa Rosa.

Other mentors agree.

"Given its resources and given the local climate, it's done an outstanding job," said Paul Bozzo, a Santa Rosa strategy consultant to startup companies.

The iHub "has a role in driving further economic development. But there's a lot of people who need to sign on to that bandwagon for the North Bay to thrive," he said, citing governments, banks, chambers of commerce and big employers.

"It's in our mutual best interest," Bozzo said.