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Please everyone. Do some research on names for your incubator/accelerator/shared space. Case in point: LaunchPad Long Island was the subject of a recent writeup in Newsday.  We sincerely wish them (and their clients) well. But we've reported on at least 6 different "Launchpad" organizations in this blog in the short while we've been publishing. Some of them, like Laurier's LaunchPad, are really great organizations. I'll bet most of them are. But in a field that's supposed to be about innovation, can't there be a little bit of innovation about the name of your organization?

The new Louisiana State University AgCenter food business incubator that we reported on last month seems to be making good progress. According to LSU's Daily Reveille, 31 prospective tenants have signed up to participate in the  incubator. That's pretty good considering they began from a standing start just a few weeks ago. The facility will open on campus in April and is headed by Gaye Sandoz, pictured here on the right in a photo from the Reveille, with John Finley, head of the Food Sciences department at LSU.

In New York's "State of the State" document released today (see http://www.scribd.com/doc/119659923/FINAL-2013-SOS), state governor Cuomo said that he intended to set up an "Innovation Hot Spots Program". The program involves 10  education/private sector incubators targeted at tech innovation. It seems that some incubators will be new ones and some will be set up at existing ones. Some nice perks are involved: for example, incubated startups (including incubator graduates) in the hot spots won't need to pay state business, real estate or sales taxes for 5 years.

Rockstart Accelerator, based in Amsterdam, announced the results of its first year of operations in a press release today.

Of the ten startups in Rockstart's 2012 class, so far four have raised follow on funding. One of those, Imgzine, reached the break-even and expanded to Silicon Valley. Some salient details are:

Springboard Internet of Things (IoT) has announced a partnership with Kickstarter. Springboard IoT, based in the UK, is one of the emerging groundswell of seed accelerators that target hardware startups -- in Springboard IoT's case, companies that are developing internet-enabled devices that can communicate with each other and with other devices. Since getting hardware products off the ground can require significant working capital, this program makes a lot of sense. Hats off to Springboard IoT and Kickstarter. Watch for other accelerators to respond with similar programs. 

Top Gun Maine  announced its 2013 cohort yesterday.  Last November we reported that they were looking for up to 20 teams and it turns out that 17 teams made the cut.

The Waterloo Accelerator Centre and Wilfrid Laurier University (both based in Waterloo, Canada) today announced a new partnership involving Laurier's LaunchPad student entrepreneurship program. Laurier LaunchPad helps Laurier students create businesses while at the same time getting full-course credit. Once students have completed the course, they have the opportunity  to continue their ventures with the help of LaunchPad’s resources and programming.

Our friends at the  StartupHighway seed accelerator in Lithuania have let us know that they're now open for applications for their third cohort. Selected applicants will begin a 13 week program in the country's capital, Vilnius, on May 1. Startups from anywhere in the world can apply. They have a very impressive list of mentors, including Toivo Annus, co-founder of Skype. 

The Cincinnati Minority Business Accelerator is recruiting a second portfolio manager according to a report in bizjournals.com. The new recruit would work alongside Denise deSilva who is currently the portfolio manager there. The job opening occured because the previous incumbent, Jilson Daniels, was named the director of finance for the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Interested applicants should probably start at the accelerator's website: http://www.cincinnatiusa.org/business-resources/minority-business-accele....

LTO Ventures today announced a unique initiative: the Autism Entrepreneurs Center incubator. Their goal is to help adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) start up and operate real for-profit businesses. Based in southern Nevada, the center's goal is to have 12 such businesses up and running within a year.

San Francisco's RocketSpace accelerator has named Karl Knight as its new president and chief financial officer. Knight was previously the managing director of Recurrent Energy and before that was CFO at Regenesis Power. Knight joins CEO Duncan Logan, COO Todd Elsberg, CRO (chief revenue officer) Eryc Branham on RocketSpace's management team. That's a lot of chiefs. Knight will be responsible for RocketSpace’s finances and strategy.

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) accelerator loan program has had payback. We mean the good kind of payback: one it's loan recipients, Avaxia Biologics Inc, has paid back its 2010 loan with interest. Ahead of time. Avaxia recently raised $6.4 million in its B-round and was able to repay the orginal $375k loan. The loans aren't cheap: they have a 10% interest rate according to the funding agreement template we found on the MLSC web site.

Long time readers of The Accelerator Gazette (we've been publishing for over 6 months now!) will note that we've been covering the problems that Taiwanese science parks have been going through. It's certainly been a tough year for most of them. Happily, Hsinchu Science Park, near Taipei City, has recently reported a bit of good news claiming that their clients' revenue grew by 2.08% in the first 10 months of 2012. Not exactly stellar, but better than the dismal numbers reported by Taiwan's science parks throughout the year. That said, we also seen reported numbers change later (usually downwards), so don't pop any celebratory champagne corks just yet. 

Three regional development organizations in Virginia have joined forces to set up a new regional incubator. Jointly sponsored by James City County, Williamsburg, and York County, the existing James City County Incubator became the Historic Triangle Business Incubator on January 1. The incubator also draws on the resources of nearby William and Mary College. There's not a huge amount of money involved: the three organizations will contribute a total of $34,500 yearly. Further funding will come from an interesting up-side gamble.

If you've ever tried to do an email campaign, you'll appreciate how hard it is to get noticed. That said, thankfully the accelerator/incubator world doesn't use the word 'sex' too often to get attention. StartupYard, a seed accelerator based in Prague, Czech Repubic, did recently  but to be fair they were only trying to get noticed and didn't overdo it.