Economic and Sustainable Performance of Startups Incubated by Universities in the State of Puebla (EDUCATECONCIENCIA)

Summary

• Mexico has 209 incubators: 67 traditional, 132 technology-based and 10 high-technology.p.4
• The questionnaire was sent to more than 100 entrepreneurs through 4 incubators, and 30 responses were received.p.12
• 29 firms (96.7%) in the sample are microenterprises and 1 firm (3.3%) is a small enterprise.p.18
• Training is the most mentioned support (25 cases), followed by advisory (22), physical space (16), contact network (15) and financing (9).p.19
• Incubator administrators report that 60%, 80%, 80% and 65% of incubated firms survive and grow after 3 years.p.23
• Only 30% of entrepreneurs strongly agree that the incubator gave access to funding, while 56% answered little or none.p.26

Key insights

1. The largest group of incubated firms comes from Tecnológico de Monterrey with 13 cases, followed by BUAP with 12.p.16
2. The best represented sectors are Services with 12 cases and Commerce with 7.p.17
3. 70% of entrepreneurs strongly agree that mentoring contributed significantly to developing the business model.p.25
4. Only 23% strongly agree that their firm has kept a constant profitability in recent years.p.26
5. 30% rate government policies as only slightly favorable and 27% say the economic environment has not been favorable for survival.p.26
6. There are more than 7000 incubators worldwide.p.3
7. The Innova UNAM model works with a network of 22 incubators and 8 laboratories.p.8