Youngstown Business Incubator offers resources & low startup costs for entrepreneurs with information technology and advanced manufacturing or 3D Printing products. The YBI also has programs and assistance for women-owned small businesses and minority-owned businesses through its Women in Entrepreneurship Program and Minority Business Assistance Center.

YBI is not owned by a university, but it is affiliated with Youngstown State, Akron, Kent State, Hiram and Case Western Reserve University. It's also part of the JumpStart Entrepreneurial Network, offering virtual services across 21 counties in Northeast Ohio. The program is funded through the Ohio Third Frontier program.

Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI) is a non-profit corporation, funded in part by the Ohio Department of Development. Its mission is to facilitate the creation of high-value businesses through collaborative partnerships that promote innovative technologies and long-term, sustainable employment opportunities, with a focus on information technology and advanced manufacturing. Although YBI works with firms possessing a broad range of proprietary technologies, its current focus is on developing B2B software application companies. YBI´s niche is information technology, specifically the development and integration of business-to-business software applications that can be utilized in a wide range of industries to solve business challenges and create economic opportunities.

The vision of The Youngstown Business Incubator is to leverage its entrepreneurial expertise and resource network to meaningfully impact technology-based economic development and community wealth.

YBI is part of a managed technology cluster, meaning that it holds each of the 300 employees responsible for sharing their unique business or technical knowledge with others in the cluster that may need to gain that knowledge.

YBI works with very early stage ventures to established businesses, providing a wide array of entrepreneurial services and resources as well as access to facilities and equipment. YBI’s extensive network of successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, financial investors, consultants and educators are committed to helping technology entrepreneurs succeed.

Youngstown Business Incubator offers several training workshops, competitions and educational opportunities for budding tech entrepreneurs.

• Learning Labs educational workshops - YBI offers several educational workshops taught by expert members of their network and staff. These are for example: basics of what it takes to find, validate and launch a business idea, interactive workshop with customized sections - value proposition mapping, in-house research, and voice-of-the-customer research, etc.

• 3D printing training - BIZ3D is an introduction to 3D printing with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and business approaches to 3D printing. It is an innovative training session targeted for high school students that combines basic 3D design elements with cost modeling to achieve optimized design.

• Market verification studies - The market verification process consists of YSU (Youngstown State Univetsity) students making phone calls to potential customers to validate the target market. The benefit of this is that the clients are able to get unbiased information from the customer.

• Student worker assistance - YBI portfolio companies can apply for partially or fully subsidized student workers based on their location and level of engagement with the YBI.

• Monus Entrepreneurship fellows - Funded by the Youngstown State University Williamson College of Business Administration, this program is an opportunity for business students to be placed with a YBI portfolio company to work on various projects related to their field of study, gain valuable insights while applying their studies to real world situations, and be fully immersed in the entrepreneurial experience.

YBI is recognized as the No.1 High Impact Incubation Program in North America by UBI Global in 2015. The downtown Youngstown incubator has 32 portfolio companies that operate out of a five-building campus. It's also home to a federally funded research and development center, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

The Youngstown incubator has played a role in the success of companies that in total employ more than 500 people with sales of about $54 million in 2016. They've been awarded 17 intellectual property patents, developed 24 new commercial software applications, and have customers in more than 80 countries.

The Ohio Development Services Agency (DSA) partnered with Youngstown Business Incubator to host regional Minority Business Assistance Centers (MBAC). The center serves the needs of small, minority, and socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. The center provides important services including technical assistance, professional consulting, access to capital and assistance obtaining contract opportunities. A primary objective of the program is to identify emerging businesses and cultivate their growth and sustainability. The realization of this objective will strengthen the minority business community, support job creation and further economic growth in Ohio. Professional MBAC staff work with owners of existing businesses, certified Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs), certified Encouraging Diversity Growth and Equity (EDGE) and socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. MBEs are defined as businesses that are at least 51 percent or more owned and controlled by one of the following groups: African American, Hispanic, Native American or Asian American or Woman. EDGE certified businesses are defined as enterprises that are owned by economically and socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

http://additivemanufacturing.com/2018/04/04/first-xjet-am-system-in-us-is-up-and-running-at-youngstown-business-incubator/