The Startup Portal, and when you get one

It exists because of a relationship#

The Startup Portal is not something you switch on. It is what you get once an incubator or accelerator accepts you, and everything in it - funding requests, office space, facility bookings, tasks, announcements - belongs to that association rather than to your company in general.

What is in it#

• Applications - everything you have applied to, and what each one is waiting on
• Funding - requests you have raised against a programme, and what has actually been paid out
• Office space - desks and offices you rent from the centre, with the payments
• Facilities - labs, meeting rooms and equipment you can book by the hour
• Tasks - work assigned to you or your team, usually by the programme
• Announcements - what the incubator has told you, and what you tell your own team
• Data requests - the numbers your incubator asks for on a schedule

Before you have one#

While you are still applying, the useful work is all on the public side of the platform, and it is worth doing properly because it is what an incubator reads.

• Fill in your company page - that record is what carries into an application instead of you retyping it
• Find programmes that are actually open, and check what they ask for before you start
• Record your milestones as you hit them, rather than reconstructing them the week you apply

More than one incubator#

A startup can be associated with more than one centre. Each association is separate - its own funding, its own office arrangements, its own tasks and announcements - and you switch between them rather than seeing a merged view. An overview page lists them all when you need to see across.

The dashboard#

Each association has its own dashboard, showing where your applications stand, what funding has been approved against what has been paid, and anything currently waiting on you. If you open the portal and do nothing else, this is the page that tells you whether you owe somebody something.