Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten
From “DNN” March 2000
“We give birth to our future customers”
Dresden’s Yenidze combines start-up support and office marketing – with the help of a private business incubator
Mr Steffen Herbst knows: The drive to start one's own business is widely spread.
It is the how-to-do-it that is not clear to many of those who try.
Therefore, the owner of the BMS (Office and Marketing Service) in the Yenidze in Dresden,
founded a private business incubator to help these people mastering their first steps to being self-employed.
This business incubator consists, besides the 36-year old business economist,
of a lawyer and a financial service provider all located in the Yenidze.
Herbst said that when needed he could arrange for further experts.
"The founder approaches us with his concept", he explains. "The experts evaluate the concept's marketability.
If that is the case, we will give it to the bank." This is an advantage for the founder:
A concept that has been evaluated by experts is accepted more benevolently.
The founder is allocated a contact person and will be accompanied for three years.
"By then he has to have learned how to walk himself."
If wanted, there is a possibility to establish oneself in the offices of the Yenidze.
"Here, the founder receives a fully-equipped office for 360 € per month including a secretary."
Moreover, the former tobacco manufacturing facility of Hugo Zietz
with is vitreous dome is a location that customers will remember.
At this point meet the need of the founder and the interest of the office building marketer Herbst.
"We give birth to our future customers." He is certain: A founder satisfied with the consulting services,
is least likely to change the location.
He reckons his potential customers to be founders in the service sector or the information technology (IT) industry.
Currently, the most promising candidate is a citizen of Dresden that would like to open a driving school for boats.
Despite of the increasing demand, Herbst indicates that not everybody is qualified and states a maximum of ten founders. Quality instead of quantity. That implies that he has to reject concepts that are not marketable. The ultimate goal is for the young business to establish themselves on a continuing basis.
This is also a crucial interest of the employment centres that support the step out of unemployment into starting one's own business with transitional allowance. Between 1991 and 1999, according to the regional council Dresden, the employment centres supported more that 9,000 start-ups, only last year a total of 1,584 and some 10,000 per year in the entire state of Saxony. A nationwide survey revealed that 80 percent of the supported businesses are still autonomous after three years. A competent consulting service during the initial steps is of utmost importance for a high success rate, explains Birgit Domschke from the employment centre Radebeul. However, this exceeds the capacities of the centres. "The placement officers are neither business men nor consultants." As the need for individual counseling is on the rise, seminars for founders of a new business are not enough. Therefore, the business incubators as that in the Yenidze are very important.
In the meantime, the network of consulting services for business founders has been increased to an extent that it almost can be described as a jungle, elaborates Birgit Domschke. To avoid business founders to meander, the regional council provides a service hotline: At
+49 (0) 3511 8 25 30 09 guidance can be sought.
