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Why Incubators Are Set To Transform Business Development In The 21st Century

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The following article was sponsored by FDT Incubator

If you pay any mind to Silicon Valley activity, you would’ve likely heard the buzzword “Incubator” by now. Perhaps you think incubators are confined to software development, but they’re much more than that: incubators are the next generation of talent development and are set to revolutionize the 21st century’s economy.

Let’s backtrack a second to provide definition for those not in the know. Incubators are, more or less, enterprises that help startup companies develop by providing services like management training or office space.

Consider the world’s most famous incubator, Y Combinator. YC accepts pitches from startup companies with stellar ideas, injects them with $120,000 of capital, then works intensively with them over the course of three months to get their startup ready to pitch to investors. Of course some of these startups fail. Others, like Airbnb and Reddit, shoot to the stratosphere, and YC cashes out earning much more than their initial investment.

The model was made famous with software startups, but incubators can now be found in any industry, from hardware development to experimental restaurant design to finance. Incubators exist in different industries for different reasons. Ultimately they are the most efficient and fair ways of finding and nurturing new talent. Now why is that?

1. Incubators are data-driven

1024px-Vostok_Petit_data.svg

At the core of any incubator is data. What works, what doesn’t. If you’ve taken a Gender Studies class, you’ll remember lectures about how you should consider a variety of qualitative factors – not just data. But in reality, it’s cold hard quantitative data that drives sales and growth.

Or consider this: a financial incubator that actively recruits people with no professional experience or finance, or perhaps no formal education in the finance sector. Through an app that allows users to competitively trade different financial markets against their friends and other players around the world, this incubator gathers data on its users, which allows them to weed out those with potential vs. those too risk-prone.

2. Incubators are about skill development

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Incubators are meant to be a learning experience. They are designed to provide you with an environment where your skillset can be nurtured under the guidance of peers and experts.

This skill development can take a variety of forms. One popular method is mentorship from industry experts. These are experts late in their careers that want to see the next generation thrive and prosper. For example, Stanford’s StartX incubator has executives from many of the world’s great software companies as mentors. These industry experts have already seen it all, with no problem being new to them, and they are there to help you.

3. Incubators are about meritocracy

Team of business people working together on a laptop

It should be refreshing for ROK readers to hear that Incubators are absolutely NOT about affirmative action or representing the “underrepresented.” They’re about showing that you can improve your skills and develop a plan to take your passion or profession to the next level.

Your endgame in an incubator will be unique. How you define success is up to you. It might be that your startup’s app gets a next round of funding, because of its quality and market potential, or that you’re invited to an interview at a big financial firm because you have proven that you have the ability to succeed through your track record of increasing profitability when trading.

A special kind of incubator

One example of an incubator that scouts out budding financial talent and gives them a leg up is FDT Incubator. Through its ForexMaster app, FDT Incubator allows users to develop their trading skills and financial literacy by competitively trading against their friends — or strangers — from around the world. For users it’s entirely cost/risk-free.

Anyone that proves themselves to be a consistently profitable virtual trader has the chance to participate in FDT’s free Incubator program, where they will have the opportunity to receive seed capital to manage a real, funded trading account. As users progress through the Incubator they will have more and more responsibility as a trader—and take home a bigger and bigger cut of their earnings. The best part is, many of the top traders on ForexMaster don’t have traditional finance backgrounds — they got to where they are based on practice and skill alone.

To inform their talent discovery model, FDT Incubator holds monthly contests for students to prove their skills and win some cold, hard cash. Currently, FDT Is hosting a free-to-enter Trade-A-Thon where $25,000 worth of prizes (including the newest iPhone 6s Plus and iPad mini 4) are on the table.

POSTER (high res)

There are many other examples of Incubators. FDT Incubator isn’t the only one. But it’s a model that’s beginning to prove itself, allowing talent a way to reach the top – without hiring quotas to get in their way.

Learn more about FDT Trade-A-Thon 2015 here.

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42 thoughts on “Why Incubators Are Set To Transform Business Development In The 21st Century”

  1. Next up, “3 Reasons Why Kratom Will Push Your Career Forward”
    It will be summed up with 3 pictures of the things most of us will never simultaneously have without Kratom:

    1. I want to be put into an incubator with some Kratom. I would basically emerge being Superman.

      1. It’s too bad you autists won’t actually read and think about the article. Instead you just post your childish memes.

        2. You’re using “autists” as an insult and you are accusing other people of being childish?

  2. Who here reads the sponsored post’s for a laugh?
    I find the tone somewhat condescending though, like they’re trying to wear our general collective mindset so they can sell us something. It seems to me slightly reminiscent of those talking-down ‘hey, bro x is not cool k?’ feminist articles that adopt over the top frat-house cliche slang with the pretense of pushing whatever flavour gynocentric nonsense of the day.
    EDIT: This is one of the better ones, actually quite interesting, but lots of others I find quite silly. Just railing against sponsored posts, but if they keep ROK up then I’m happy to read a few.

    1. I just read the headline and then scroll to the bottom for kratom jokes

      1. Fair enough, I feel a sort of duty to at least make some sort of effort to read it for the sake of ROK. Has anyone here actually tried it?
        From what I hear it’s many different things to many different people (placebo, anyone?).

    2. It’s not like they are. They are, but this one helps startups unlike the sba which is exactly what our economy needs or so they say.

      1. Kratom is real man. Its the “Kratom will get you laid stuff” that’s bullshit. Really they should market Kratom for what it is rather than deceive you into thinking its something else. Everyone here sees through that.

    1. Quite he opposite. I took some kratom and happened to say “ninety nine” and this just happened

    1. You would not have forgotten phenibut if your brain was stimulated with incubated kratom

      1. The SupermanDro blocked him from thinking about anything but RIPPING SOMEONE’S HEAD OFF!!!

  5. I’m not sure what all the hate is for. Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, and Heroku were all in Incubator programs. I’ve done plenty of work with Incubators. They’re like VCs on steroids. Especially the good ones like Y-Combinator.
    Why people are linking the idea of incubators with Kratom, I have absolutely no idea.
    Well-written article. I’ll be taking a look into the app; I’ve always had an interest in investing anyway.

    1. lol i think Kratom gives a bad name to all Sponsored Post’s on ROK. Which is too bad for a post like this then, because incubators are fantastic. I agree with this post’s subhead: incubators really are set to change the way startups blow up in the 21st century.

      1. I joke as much as the next guy but Kratom is good shit. I think that they go a little far with the Kratom will double your dick size and make you irresistible to women sales pitch though.

        1. Wait until new and improved kratom. Basically it is people making kratom while ON kratom which makes it the most kratomy kratom in history.
          Just knowing that that stuff exists doubled the size of my penis.
          I think if I ever take a full dose of New and Improved Kratom, every woman I ever banged will spontaneously drop dead — their last word will be a whisper of my name.

        2. And the new, improved Kratom suppositories are guaranteed to protect a young player’s anal-virginity if he’s unlucky enough to be spending a few weeks at the greybar hotel.

    2. It’s paying the bills, we all know that here. I’m sure Kratom has it’s benefits as well.

      1. Maybe. Seems to be more herbal ‘magic’ BS than anything else.
        Incubators are the norm in places like Silicon Valley now. And my guess is they’re set to spiral higher in higher in value in the upcoming years.

    3. Yes, Y-Combinator, as the writer mentions, is the holy grail of incubators for startups.
      Although I’ve never heard of a trading incubator like the one being advertised. I’ll have to check it out and see if it’s legit or not. Remember, kids, if you have to put capital into an incubator, get out now. If it’s equity they want, well that’s the standard of what all incubators are after anyway so that’s fine.
      At the very least I’m glad to see incubators getting some shine. Certainly it’s better than sponsored posts about weightlifting, kratom to increase your sexual performance… and sometimes ROK gets so bogged down in feminism. Career development is important too (for those that haven’t given up or moved abroad to teach English)!

      1. There’s a battalion of newly-minted red-pill recruits going abroad as traveling Kratom salesmen, seeking a better life in distant lands where the chicks are still feminine and the males have penises in need of enlargement.

    4. There’s always a lot of hate for sponsored posts. Its a bit of a trigger for people. Nothing worse than someone trying to earn some money.

      1. Lol “nothing worse than someone trying to earn some money”
        Dunno if that’s said sarcastically or not. I hope not

    6. Maybe the haters had too much SuperManDro, and feel like “ripping someone’s head off!!!”, etc.

    7. Y-Combinator is not an incubator. So to say that Airbnb, Reddit and Dropbox were started in an incubator is either ignorant or purposefully deceitful. Either way you probably don’t want to get involved with someone making such a comparison.

        1. Of course you’re misled. You’re listening to shitty journalists.
          Here’s one of the founders of Y-Combinator: “I’ve heard Y Combinator described as an “incubator.” Actually we’re the opposite: incubators exert more control than ordinary VCs, and we make a point of exerting less.” He goes on… http://www.paulgraham.com/sfp.html.
          I’m LOL’ing here, watching the antics of all these “hustlers” who don’t actually have the aptitude to succeed at creating real wealth so they try to pull scams.

        2. i think the idea of the accelerator/incubator is the same, and differences in naming are needlessly nitpicky. at the end of the day, they inject capital into startups, traders, etc. and get back equity for their investments.

  6. If I read this right, this would be the equivalent of a venture capitalist giving out cash combined with something akin to a skill development training organization?

    1. Basically yes, sans the cash part. They’re basically guided, collaborative startup offices where the various startups share working space and access to the incubator’s consultants and leaderships. If you’re experienced you don’t know them but the younger kids can benefit massively from access to that knowledge(provided they’re willing to listen to the good advice and aware enough to spot the bad).

    1. If I read this post correctly, as the sponsor is also an Incubator, you don’t have to actually put in your own money to invest. That’s kind of the point of an Incubator, right? incubators like 500 Startups or Y Combinator don’t make you pay anything to get accepted into their programs; they just want equity.
      So in this case I’m guessing for FDT Incubator, if you get accepted into their program they would take a majority of any earnings you make, and the rest would go to you.
      Long and short: you’re not risking anything by getting into an Incubator.

      1. The article should NOT have advertised incubators without explaining what they are.

        1. The article assumed a worldly readership, familiar with the finer things in life such as Kratom and incubators.

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