The Start Project Takes No Outside Ideas to Incubate

Investor Josh Felser has joined hands with a group of entrepreneurs to initiate a new business incubator called The Start Project . Founded in December 2009, The Start Project is a Silicon Valley-based company that aims to create, launch and fund startups. The focus would be on new consumer websites.

The Force Behind The Start

Apart from Felser, the other forces behind The Start Project are Polaris Venture Partners and the founders of 83 Degrees.

Josh Felser: An angel investor and a founding partner in Freestyle Capital, an early stage venture fund focused on the Internet and technology sectors. Felser also co-founded Crackle, the Internet video community that was acquired by Sony in 2006 for US$65 million. Felser is on the board of directors of The Start Project and his role is to help with overall strategy and recruiting.

Polaris Venture Partners: A partnership of investors and technology executives, which invests in seed, first round and early stage technology and life science businesses. Polaris is offering The Start Project office space and it will have a first look option to invest in the new firms supported by the business incubator.

TechCrunch reports, “Cofounder Narendra Rocherolle says that his team loves identifying trends and building applications, but they need a way to turn those ideas and products into companies. This new partnership (The Start Project), which he says is still a work in progress, will give them the platform they need to build companies around those products.”

83 Degrees: A team that has built several successful companies, including Webshots, a photo sharing site that was ultimately sold for US$150 million. 83 Degrees has also founded 30 Boxes and Power Twitter.

GigaOM writes:

At The Start Project, Rocherolle is going to be drumming up ideas. And unlike incubators in the past, the company isn’t going to be taking in outside ideas to incubate.

Instead, the Mill Valley, California-based company plans to drum up a half-dozen new ideas every year, of which two or more will be spun out as independent companies and raise venture capital, Rocherolle said. Polaris Ventures will have first dibs on these independent companies for investment.

The article comments, “That’s eventually going to be the key challenge for The Start Project. It’s hard enough to come up with a big, venture-backed idea every three years – coming up with two or more such companies each year is going to be as challenging as repeating back-to-back Super Bowls.”

What remains to be seen is how nimble The Start Project can be. Its success would depend to a large extent on how quickly and effectively it can react and adjust to the changing market and economic conditions.