Entrepreneurs working on software, interactive game or Internet-related products now can look to a new Innovation Works program for help in getting their companies started.
The state-funded nonprofit based on the South Side announced Thursday that its AlphaLab mentoring program will invest $25,000 and provide free office space, staff expertise and access to advisers and investors for up to 12 fledgling companies a year.
The first group of companies is to begin the six-month program in May. The idea is to help them quickly develop and test their technologies and improve "alpha," or early versions of it so that they can move toward a commercial launch.
Innovation Works' goal is to help create companies that will grow in the region, rather than license their ideas elsewhere, spokeswoman Terri Glueck said. Venture firms Y Combinator of Cambridge, Mass., and Mountain View, Calif., and TechStars of Boulder, Colo., have similar programs but aren't specific to a region, she said.
A committee of business advisers, software developers and Innovation Works' AlphaLab team will review applications, and view presentations by some companies.
Pittsburgh has a growing number of software development, game design and Internet application companies, Innovation Works said. A recent study for the Entertainment Software Association said Pennsylvania's computer and video game industry alone grew by 21.4 percent in 2006 -- adding $39.8 million to the economy.
Innovation Works has invested in more than 100 early-stage companies since 2000, and its portfolio companies have gone on to raise more than $440 million elsewhere.
Lynsie Camuso said participation in a program like AlphaLab could have allowed she and partner Joshua Dziabiak to establish their year-old ShowClix concert-listing Web site more quickly.
While the money would have been helpful, she and Dziabiak spent a lot of time doing market research, and trying to get feedback from early users -- expertise that would have been available through Innovation Works.
"And you know, time is everything in the technology world," Camuso said. ShowClix received $150,000 from Innovation Works in September for product development.
Craig Gomulka, director of Draper Triangle Ventures and an AlphaLab adviser agreed the "shelf life for new software, gaming and Internet applications is measured in weeks and months."
Carnegie Mellon University computer science Professor Lenore Blum said she sees school and other CMU departments becoming feeders for AlphaLab, and she envisions the program working as a pipeline to connect the university to the business "start-up world, and beyond."
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