About

It’s May 2017 and Genius Den just let out of a lecture. The room was filled with startup entrepreneurs – some from outside the ecosystem, many are members of the GeniusDen community. The speaker gets all 10’s on the KPI survey and his presentation, slides, handout worksheet will be up on the website in 30 minutes with the best 5 minutes of sound bites will be up on the public site by 6:00 AM with e-mails and social media posts with links to them out by 7:30 AM. The speaker will get the edited version of his presentation and Q and A by 8:00 AM with a thank-you email and handwritten thank-you note with gift in the next day’s mail. He will be pleased and surprised at the number and depth of the comments on his presentation.

The community enjoyed speaker one-on-one time and food and drinks provided by our sponsors, who received photos and thank-you emails by 8:30 the next morning. Many of these moving parts are coordinated by the Ground Control staff who make the events go from calendar organization, to setup/break-down of the space).

The Members take away action points to implement into their growPlan and to discuss and present on progress and challenges in their next monthly GeniusBoard meeting with peer startup founders. Membership is on a waitlist with all seats taken and all offices filled.  We are already looking for the next space nearby and are running on a shared platform allowing members to move from space to space depending on capacity and their needs.

We believe in focus. In our experience focus equals success. In order to maintain community consistency, we decided to do something we’ve seen work elsewhere. We created a category – more than “coworking” and different from “accelerator” – we are an INCUBATOR. And we are here for those businesses that are launched and growing, and ready to lean in to bigger success.

Businesses at the same stage of the business maturity life-cycle will experience similar growing pains, and working in an environment with other founders will allow for shared insights and collaboration. The same cannot be said about businesses in vastly different stages.

We are not excluding anyone – we offer lots of open events and open-desk days that invite a wash of new people and ideas through the GeniusDen. However we are radically inclusive of startup founders who are ready to do the hard work in their next phase of growth. Some call this work the Valley of Death phase. It’s hard and takes focus and discipline. And it’s best done in the company of others in the same place.

Without a plan you are just a tourist.
-General George S. Patton