Economic Development Committee on March 6th. We are here to talk about the incubators. As you may know, this committee has been doing quite a lot of work on incubators for the past year at this point, including doing a tour not only with the Montgomery County incubators, but we have gone outside our jurisdiction to see how other people, how other jurisdictions are implementing them. So before we actually kick off, we have a video to show based on our last meeting. So Mr. Volole, kick it away. That's good. But you're gonna tell us about the challenges in the piece that we need. Can you tell me the beautiful piece? Tell me the piece that you need. Members of the Montgomery County Council's Economic Development Committee took a facts finding tour of two of the county's innovation centers. We're learning about the experiences of our startup companies that deal with IT, our biomeg, space, science, and so much more. The tour began at the Germantown Innovation Center. Here we primarily focus on life science. Primarily we have the strong biotech connection here. We also have the wet labs. The county's innovation network team showed spaces designed to help launch startup biotechnology companies. All except one of the labs comes with a chemical fuelume put. Each of the labs has a backup power which is huge and they're all piped with DIY and DIY water which is a big piece for anybody that's working with life science. Some companies are not ready yet to rent one of the large labs that we just are right now. We call these our share now. For example, here we have one, two, three, four benches. Some companies just want a bench to start doing the work. The council members also heard from entrepreneurs about the challenges they face and what the county can do to further support their industries. Education hall criteria, how to scale up, how we and scale-up, how we can increase our visibility, how we should get connected to venture capital, or like capital, of course. I think those are things that could be sort of provided with the future. If we have shared a core facility in terms of imaging or some of the state of our technology for us to use, temporarily or short term to address some needs to answer after this question, I think that'll be excellent. After a quick photo in Germantown, the tour continued at the Rockville Innovation Center, where council members saw existing spaces for technology entrepreneurs. So this is our co-working space. We usually have it arranged with all the desks on the side. Our coworking spaces for those companies are too small yet too rent a whole office space. Lastly, three more entrepreneurs share their stories of how using the innovation network sites has boosted their businesses and gave tips on how to attract more entrepreneurs to the county's business incubators. We saw just a desk in the co-working space, but over the years, our company grew right now. We have four disks and an office developing the next generation of our product and growing the sales and marketing for the existing products. That's our focus. Based on our interaction with the county, and I see, I'll get a lot of resources and then I'll introduce them to the a lot of services for the CPCA and use it in a lot of forms. So that was very useful. If you want to bring in more of people like me, the way to do it, the tools that I mentioned for building electronics are prohibitively expensive for small companies. I'm hoping to grow my business to the point where I can afford those tools, but at this point, I just can't. We learned that in Montgomery County, we still have a big need of providing more technical assistance, providing more marketing support for these companies, and really connecting the dots to help them and help them move to the next level. The fact that we have the committee here in the Montgomery County Council is taking a look at these issues. It speaks loudly that we are taking every step to become the number one place in the nation for life sciences. Reporting in Montgomery County, I'm Joseph Thompson. I was there. Thank you so much for the communication. Steve from the Ghani Council for being there with us. Your work is very appreciate. And this entire effort has been done in conjunction with the Ghani Secretary's office. And he shows the partnership that we do have in the Montgomery County as a government to move us forward. With that, I'm gonna ask council staff, Mr. Ali to be proceed with his work. Thank you. So afternoon, members of the committee. This is another one of the FY25 budget follow-ups. It's an opportunity to look into the performance of various budgets under your jurisdiction to date and then also maybe understand ways to reprogram an FY26 and get ideas ahead of the budget. This is slightly more focused on the menu of options for growing incubators. As you can see, starting on page three, there's relatively, you know, there's some information about what they've been doing, but it's a lot of business. As usual, you can see the trends there and I know the county executives staff are here to speak to some of this. They also provided a little bit of an overview of each of the innovation centers, which is provided on page two, but of course you just saw that in the videos as well. Just to revisit last year's budget discussion, the Ultimately Council approved $2.4 million to support the four Incubator Centers as they exist, and there was also three million approved for P incubator CIP for upgrades there. There was a proposal for an innovation center contractor and a new innovation manager position. And the description of that proposal was provided on page three and on page four. Ultimately, it was not approved, although there was robust discussion about why this is potentially useful moving towards a 30-party acknowledging that there are certain gaps within the Innovation Center network today that could be potentially enhanced or addressed with this proposal, ultimately the Council, but committee did not approve it and the Council didn't approve it in part because the funding was characterized as a shift for MCDC. And so I've provided a little bit of explanation on the background adaptive session. But again, if the committee were to receive a similar proposal, you may also want to dig in with a few more questions that I've laid out here just to anticipate another budget request, but the similar concept, just sort of fleshing out a little bit more of the types of contractors that may provide this, you know, knowing that there are sensitivities around the procurement process, studies of the types of work that they do just to get a better handle on the proposal. Broadly, and we'll sort of talk a little bit about why a third-party type organization or entity is useful in managing an innovation network. There may be an outstanding question of like, well, can you utilize existing third-party structures that exist with the county government at MCEDC as such a structure, so maybe trying to understand some of the trade-offs of repurposing what the county already has versus entering into a new partnership. And there are also some questions from our esteemed expert at Margaret Strategies Miss Sarah Miller about all their ways to evaluate the proposal if it resurfaces from like 26. OLO, the Office of Legislative Oversight and Miss Latham here have provided a very detailed overview of the incubator network. And so now let's turn it over to their staff to walk through some of the definitions that they uncovered in their research about best practices for incubators. Councillor Neill, many Gonzales asked, oh well, to a report that kind of looked at best practices for business incubation kind of across the nation. And overall I found that there is no one definition. There are many, many examples of what incubation can look like. There are, however, four kind of overall components of what is best practices in incubation and what an incubator looks like. There's the infrastructure of the incubator, whether that means lab space, office space, whether it's subsidized or low rent. It's kind of, again, it varies across what type of incubator you want and who is administering that incubator. The second is providing business services. So a lot of times you hear that these folks suspecting the tech field are really smart at the science. But the HR, the financing, the legal things, the accounting, the marketing, they just don't have the expertise to have or the time to kind of worry about those things. So a lot of incubators will provide an array of these services. Thirdly is financing, whether that means access to a network of ventricle totalists or know, connecting with grant opportunities or providing your own financial support. Again, barriers by incubator. And then lastly, it's kind of the, and what I found is the most important part of it all is people connectivity. It's the networking. It's the relationship you have with other entrepreneurs. It's with experts in the field. It's with the business support services. It's for and the accountants, and it's also with like the financial connections. That's kind of the overall big picture kind of pieces. So we're just going to continue moving on through the staff pack and then we'll turn up to the next section, but just briefly, OLO also provided an overview of different models of incubators, the CM87. Naturally, Naturally, our counties of economic development incubators are really local economic and eliminate incubators. Obviously, there is the presence of significant biotech companies. The industry is here, obviously. So there's a question of how do you enhance these services to maybe resemble something more akin to an academic or a scientific incubator. So maybe there are aspects of those more advanced incubators that can be incorporated into the local innovation network that exists today. And in fact, that's pretty much the subject of the rest of the staff report. There is a summary of all the floating-core recommendations starting on page 11 going off to page 12 with a little of the details fleshed out prior to that. Basically, this is a relatively open list of possibilities for all of your consideration. Some of them are easier to maybe implement through legislation or funding. Some would require maybe more research, but this is an opportunity for the economic development and the community to maybe recommend where executive or council staff focus their time in terms of coming up with proposals. Broadly speaking, there's probably a need for more comprehensive strategy that can maybe prioritize and sort of put a timeline to some of these activities. But short of that in the meantime, there may be elements here that you think are worthwhile to explore. And so this is an opportunity to hear what those things could be. And many of these things are things that you've heard in the past. And so, and I'll just say these ideas come from our economic development consultant, Mark Rafe strategies. It's so sort of trade off here as we work through this list. I'm just going to read off from the bullets and then Miss Miller will sort of explain some of the details of these ideas. We're going to and then by the way, do we also have slides from the executive staffs and always return to that after this. Sorry. Thank you for checking that. Yeah. All right. So the first topic is sort of increasing and enhancing infrastructure. the first two sub-bullets under there are related to increasingly amount of left-to-left space, whether that's directly managed or working with private property owners to create smaller, wet-life spaces. And just to say that for the infrastructure piece in particular, they're having a house. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Sarah Miller with my of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of the same and I'm sure that you have a lot of entrepreneurship and small businesses in general. And so as Balaul said, many of these recommendations or thoughts are not necessarily new, but it's something I think every year as you look at the budget and you prioritize things for the county. Take a look at them and see if they are still relevant. Again, thinking about infrastructure, obviously, the German town incubator and the work that has been put into that to repurpose some of the offices into wetlabs space small wet lab space has always been a challenge. And so one of the things that at MCEDC before we had thought about a little bit was, are there ways that we could use some of the larger wet lab space and kind of divide it? And obviously that's really, really expensive, but we also know from our Biola pilot project and some other projects that that really small space is what is important. And so I've just, you know, think about again, the environment here now, obviously the share, it's a little bit different. And so we have a lot of unknowns related to funding for our businesses. And we also have a lot of changes that have happened in terms of, where do we put our limited resources in terms of incubators space? And so perhaps now that that hybrid is such a prominent feature of things, do we kind of think about shifting our priorities into those really high price, high cost wet labs, but also, can I go into the other? Not just wet lab space, but also some of our kitchen incubator space. And even I would say even some agricultural space, because although that doesn't have a lot of infrastructure on it, it's very, very expensive here in the Cobrate County. And so so thinking as the law said about entrepreneurship in general, and then having the incubator and the infrastructure piece be a tool to get us where we wanna go, we should have something to consider. Obviously, Flex Space for Manufacturing and things of that nature are also important. I think that's probably a tale for another time related to small scale manufacturing and kind of can we through zoning and other things have small scale manufacture happening in other places that are not just low-slum flex space buildings. Yeah, so yeah, the next topic is really product development and commercialization is to be clear a lot of these elements were touched upon by executive staff and their proposal for FY25. But certainly the why this is a good idea, obviously, to explain. Sure. And again, so product development and commercialization, I think we also broke out in the memo access to capital. And I kind of think of access to capital as a piece of the product and element and commercialization. But obviously in the in the in the county, but also in the region, we have extensive expertise, particularly in bio bio health. And so one of the things that we wanted to think about is, is there a way to whether a third party is coming in to manage the incubators from somewhere else or not, is there a way to harness all of this knowledge that is in the region generally? And it's not just bio-health in Montgomery County and in the greater DMV, but also there's a lot of knowledge. Because in Northern Virginia, we can't be afraid to go across the river to say, like there are people who know about cyber, there are people who know about other things. There's a lot of quantum happening in power ever. And how do we access all of that knowledge to help build entrepreneurship? And so that's a piece of this. So I just would not want us to forget all of the good things that we have in this region. I think paying for dedicated one-on-one expertise is very important. It's very, very expensive to sometimes get experts in regulatory law or things of that nature. And so one of the things I would encourage people to do is to take a look at, we did with BHI was BHI in the county. It's a funding for bless you. Providing funding for executives, I think we call them executives and residents. And it was really one-on-one hope that is costly. And so I would encourage us to go back and take a look at some of the outcomes of those interactions and to see if that's something that we might want to do as well. Again, not infrastructure intensive, but also as something that I think is rare for communities to provide for their entrepreneurs. Capital, do you wanna? I mean, just a big one more point under this project building commercialization, which is, as you know, the jobs initiative created two funds to take out three funds, but two of them reviewed applications for projects that need my interest support for the commercialization of their work. And so those applications were received and are actively being reviewed and Miss Costello has has and Ms. Truffard has been coordinating a lot of that. I've had the privilege of being a part of some of the review with that tech that Consolidant will talk a little bit more about that on Monday. But one idea was maybe to the extent that there's really valuable data about what the commercialization needs are of local businesses, it would be useful to maybe study those comprehensively and understand maybe are there new ideas coming out of that and perhaps they can speak to an effort to do that after the applications are reviewed. And then access to capital, the Margare strategy also recommended. You know, researching the possibility of partnering with investors to provide access to capital. Yeah, and that's nothing new. I mean, a lot of places, obviously, everyone, every entrepreneur is looking for either customers, right, or capital. And one of the things that we have found in, there's both a group in LA and then also in New York City, through the New York City Economic Development Corporation, based on LA's program, which is looking at investors locally that really want to make a commitment to address really abysmal numbers in terms of investing locally in particularly women and entrepreneurs of color. And so in addition to getting those investors engaged with some seed money, New York City Economic Development Corporation used 40 million, and this is just some particular, and we can get you more information, but they had a $40 million allocation of their own budget. And they partnered with different fund managers. They put out essentially an RFP, and they've done this a few rounds to engage with fund managers locally and they would invent they being and the economic development corporation invest a million one to seven million dollars in each of these fund managers and the fund managers then obviously were chosen because their goals aligned with New York economic development corporation, but they also were well regarded. So it's not just someone, you know, applied by night organization, but also they had priority and experience with emerging industry sectors. So they, for instance, they did life sciences, they did green tech, they did offshore winds, so any of those types of technologies that they were trying to grow within New York City. The one interesting thing that I think, and when we think about any of these things, if people are coming in, and we definitely want people to come in and bring ideas, but also bring their money and also bring their connections to things, so the fund managers for this group either had to be locally base, which is fine, but you could also be from outside of New York. If you committed to three times the investment that New York economic development corporation was putting in. And so that to me, I think was really interesting and it will be interesting to watch how that grows again. They've only kind of just started in the last year and a half. So it's really hard, obviously, to measure success, but you can kind of track things. And so that's something to think about as well. And then, again, the New York group is based on Pledge LA, which was the originator of it, which was again, a similar. They did not, their program is not as big as New York City. They've really taken it to a folded level. And then one other thing, I think that we should talk about too, is in the DMV, we talked about, and this was back. I keep talking about MCEDC, but back at MCEDC, we had some conversations about high net worth individuals. And a lot of this came out of actually our cybersecurity working group, which were entrepreneurs, cyber security locally. thinking about the ways that high enough, that worth individuals in the DMB might want to invest in companies, and might want to invest in things for the first time. And so how do you really kind of delicately, quietly kind of get in touch with those folks, and it is not having, you know, an event where we're like, which wealthy people come and meet and we'll talk about this. Like it has to be a very like word of mouth kind of situation. And so that's just something else that, you know, I don't know that that is like the government's role to do that. But it certainly is something that is necessarily necessary. We certainly have a lot of people here. I think would be interested in helping any any a wide range from folks who are who had expressed interest in looking at companies that were addressing specific diseases that may have affected people personally to people who wanted to help tech businesses that were run by women. And so again that piece goes back a little bit to what Belal had said earlier about, do you need kind of this third party entity that's kind of looking at entrepreneurship broadly? I think the answer is yes, but it has to be something, some one or a team really that's dedicated to kind of looking at all of these parts. That's a big thing. It's a good thing. Oh yeah, sure. Oh yeah, THS, sorry. So one of the things we also did, and this was just like obviously in the last 10 days or so, with about our workers and challenges there. So I think, you know, there are kind of two ways we could think about helping those folks, particularly with entrepreneurship. So obviously one is helping folks think about things and their expertise in new ways and they think about how they could turn their expertise into something entrepreneurial. But then also thinking about all the folks that we have again, like we were, I was singing about like the seed office at NIH and all those experts there that are contracted through BHA. And again, we don't know exactly what's going to happen, but again, those are some resources for people who could help mentor. So it's both helping people reimagine their careers perhaps, but then also having people who are used to helping entrepreneurs in the capacity of the federal government that may not be doing that. Well, so I think with that, that's pretty much the staff packet. And so now we can turn it over to the slides from these I can just add. And there's also a video at the end if you want to just step, you know, let me know if you'll short short short short. Do you want to play now at the end at the end at the end? Okay so video at the end if you want to just step you don't need to let me know if you'll short short short short. Okay, but do you um Mr. Stoller, do you want to go you now? What at the end at the end? At the end. Okay, so Mr. Ken Harman is five. Thank you so much chair funding and dollars for the record. My name is Ken Har. And as far as I system, the ministry officer really appreciate spending time with the committee over the last year to dive into the animation ecosystem. Some people ask, what is that? Well, it's a Sarah Miller point out. It is an integrated system, private public, involves many actors in our community, actors that aren't in our community yet that we want to bring to our community. But the idea is to support innovation entrepreneurs in taking ideas, creating companies, taking products to market, and ultimately adding to the vibrancy of our local economy. I really wanna make sure you know, I'm not the expert here at this table. I have experts with me, Judy Castello, so I'm a project manager and James Smith, Business Center Manager, who have done tremendous work, and I've grown to greatly respect their contributions and leadership in this effort. And I also recognize that both the Executive and Council have long supported these investments in our local companies through the county operating incubators. And I want to express my appreciation to the business center team. In the same service and years of same services and environments, they've managed to improve the occupancy, as you saw firsthand, improve the the vibrancy of our incubators, but they can only go so far in the current model, which is why we greatly appreciate the chance to tour with you regional innovation centers and the CR-Own Innovation Centers. And I feel that we've demonstrated and I appreciate the council staff's presentation that these incubators provide critical supports to our early stage startups and represent an investment in our in the growth of our local economy. And in this current environment that is needed more than ever, especially if we see reductions in our federal sector, we need to grow our other assets beyond where they are today. The administration this year, it's not a surprise, we'll be seeking your support or additional investments to grow our local innovation ecosystem. Those the needs we articulate articulate last year remain. We need a more nimble integrated approach to innovation. We believe a cornerstone of that is to recruit a nationally known recognized with a track record provider who can help us operate the three centers connect with the resources and that are tenants need that are broader community needs and also help us make those inroads with the the financing opportunities that that are out here that we need to also grow. And I appreciate the partnership with the council. I'm gonna turn it to Jean Smith to talk about our current incubators, Although I don't know how much he has to do, given the cash side packet and the committee's tours. But I'll turn it to him for the next few slides. Sure. Thank you, Gene Smith, the manager of the Montgomery County Business Center. So we've heard a little bit about our current existing facilities, but again, for those watching at home or those unfamiliar, we do have three innovation centers right now in Germantown, Rockville and Silver Spring. On this slide, we can see a little bit about their current square footage and the number of businesses there. I will highlight though, we did have a couple weeks ago a conversation about the capital improvements project program. I mean, where there's three million that the Council's already approved for infrastructure investments, which speak to a lot of what we've already heard from Council staff and from our graves in terms of investment and infrastructure. So looking at smaller wet lab shared equipment and as well as the videos showed some of the shared office space or the co-working space at Robville needs updating in order to manage it in more of in line with what folks and what businesses see as shared office or co-working space. But again, I think we've we've talked enough about the three incubators so far so I'll go ahead and Judy's going to spend a few minutes talking about some of the new spaces we've added in the last year. Sure. Just this week, as of today, someone's over at 6166, the same building at the new University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing is it. We worked starting last year to get the only available space there to host a county AI Innovation Center. We did not come to you for supplemental because we negotiated very hard to get a sub lease to see whether the interest that we kept hearing from companies working in AI and health as well as AI and other sectors was really true. So we got that lease a month or so ago and we've been working to wire and get the access. I have a meeting tomorrow to figure out the best permanent space, but already, I don't know if you can see there, it has co-working and closed offices. The three closed offices in the back were immediately spoken for their little white signs there. We have three companies that have already committed to move in in two weeks and others. One learning that we found is that in the AI world while we thought well they would like affordable flexible co-working space. A lot of its trade secret. They all want to be behind a locked door. And so we would have more people committed if we have locked doors. So much to our great department of general services construction, we are pivoting a little bit our request. And we're trying to see if there is space there. It may make sense to put it nearby because of, because that building is full and we don't want to out of the pain for space but we're working through that. I think the important thing is in addition to the the need and demand that you also personally and that we know exists for our existing county incubator as the world is going to AI as we are leveraging our investment at the Institute for Health Computing, there is an opportunity to develop a cluster of companies who want to be near the institute's AI experts and who want to be near each other. We'll talk to them about, hey, there's a little extra space in Germantown. They don't want that. They want to be, right, sorry, sorry. Germ German town is a great place. It's the proximity next to the Institute for Health and Community. I work from German town because it is a great place to work for periodically. Thank you. So, but it's being next to the Institute for Health and Computer. So that is a move we are seeking going forward in our budget request. We don't anticipate this being a substantial amount more money, but we were incorporated into the Innovation Network and where there are experts speaking to AI and business, they will be available to anybody in the network. Whether it's AI and pharma working in Germantown, or whether it's an IoT company or someone working on space and silver spray. And we also are working on partnerships, by the way, we work with our academic partners at Montgomery College clearly in Germantown, and the University of Maryland system in general, but we've specifically been speaking not only to the AI experts from College Park and the medical experts at U of B who are tied to the Institute for Health Computing, but to the Smith School, which has successfully run a program for AI and small business across industry sectors in French Georgia County. We're talking to them about bringing it and locating it near the SAI Innovation Center and making it available to, for free, the county res, county small businesses. So that gets to, I'm jumping ahead, that gets to program and services, but it's all tied together as Jean and council staff have alluded. The one other thing I know, thank you, council, for your appropriation last year in commitment to the Henry Jackson Foundation. I spoke with them as recently as earlier this week. They are moving ahead with the lab and office projects, small labs and offices that you help see under the brand of H.A. Innovation at Montgomery County, that is a pilot innovation lab project for them, for their facilities around the world. They expect to start accepting residents' applications for their lab and office space in another month or two and to have that space open in the fall. However, we have not waited to start leveraging that and the couple pictures you see here, the head of the Henry Jackson Foundation, the county executive, and I think some council staff may have been part of the first two networking and information sharing, this networking pitchers that you see had a full room there, focus of biotech companies from the county and Miss Miller from throughout the region who wanted to learn about the FDA regulatory expertise and at the opportunity to year in general and then I've custom one on one. Those are the kinds of things we want to offer more of with some more support not only at Henry Jackson, but also throughout the county and throughout the year. Turn it back to. All right. So I'm going to share a little bit of what we've done the last year, kind of where we're at. And then, Ms. Kassel and Mr. Harmon will share about where we're headed or where we'd like to head with council support and within general of where we're going. So as you've heard, we have the three innovation centers that the county owns and operates. And so a substantial amount of our money is just to keep upkeep. The Department of General Services doesn't upkeep those. The county does it through the business center with a jail little contract. And so about $1 million each year is just supporting the upkeep of these three facilities. And certainly as facilities grow or spaces grow, that's part of the equation. I would say the three things that Ms. Castello asked to do as I came on as a business center manager was to increase occupancy more tenants. And so we have two staff. You saw them in the previous video, Alicia Chavez and Richard. and I'm sure that we have been doing a lot of the prospect and along with my team, are the business center elsewhere. We get some referrals through the County Executive's office. A lot of them have come through the state through the Global Gateway program. And most of them, the team has been able to grow the number of tenants we have or the number of members we have in the innovation center. I'm proud to say that Silver Spring, which has been had been below 50% August, say well before is is is increasing. We're getting closer to the 75 80% market this year and we're hopefully getting closer to the 90% market in 2025. And so that was one of the things that I was asked to handle. And that's one of the areas we've been focused on. I wouldn't say that's a lot of the conversation. I think this committee wants to have, but the reality is it's just attracting businesses and being able to help them grow has been something that the team had been focused on. Another area that Ms. Casela asked us to focus on was just programming. We started some of it was due to COVID and other things. There was almost zero programming happening at Thank You Baters. One off here and there. Both again, the great program managed to have on the team did 29 programs last year. A lot of them were basic stuff. So once a month there was peer-to-peer conversations happening. So connecting some with the networking connections and collaboration, just giving the actual members a chance to get to know each other better than they had. Some of them are more, and then it's about a very common welcome. We'll hate this. Some of them were just more traditional lunch and learns, but nonetheless trying to reinvigorate some synergies and some opportunities there and some training that wasn't happening. And so that was one of the things the team has done. But certainly as we hear, what they are not able to always provide is some of the technical expertise, some of the more one-on-one training and wasn't happening. And so that was one of the things the team has done. But certainly as we hear, what they are not able to always provide is some of the technical expertise, some of the more one-on-one training needs to occur because as the program manager, the other thing we were dealing with is just the day-to-day management of space. They spend a lot of their time just working with each tenant just to make sure their needs are met as well as any other things that come up. And so that is kind of where we're at, as you can see in the chart that was in the Office of Legislative Oversight Report and in the Council Staff Report. I believe we've increased a lot of our numbers. We didn't have as many graduates last year, but sometimes that's a business cycle issue as opposed to an operational issue. With that, I think we'll go on to the next slide. And I will say with space, it's literally the licenses and the license agreements. And as you know, it's not just, there's a lot more paperwork and stuff that for, for, for basically 60 to 80 tenants at any one time, someone from your graduating, someone from your accepting. And this relates to why it may or may not help to have a third party disabled to do some of this contracting a little more nimbleing. Because at the end of the day, the risk assurance requirements, some of them procurement and vendor requirements are required for us to host any company as a tenant no matter how quickly we want to onboard them et cetera. And last year we talked a lot about the objectives. The steps we needed to take to strengthen our innovation ecosystem. We talked about the need to bring more entrepreneurs into the system, supporting them from idea generation to long term growth, removing the barriers and creating pathways for success. We talked about the number and effectiveness of our current resources and growing those resources to support the needs of entrepreneurs within the system directly and through partnerships. And thanks to the council's support, and we'll talk about this more Monday. The, and Mr. Bala was part of the of of the great response to the innovation grant program. There are a lot of there are entrepreneurs out there looking to get market to get products to market and are looking for support to do. We also talked about the number and strength of our connections between the entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and resources through networking, through direct contacts and programming. And we talked about the connections within our ecosystem and within the region and nations to raise the awareness of what we're doing to improve the connections we have with others. You saw innovation centers that had connections with higher education, for example. And that's certainly something that is on our mind as we move forward. It's no secret. And I think we all agree that promoting and supporting entrepreneurship is a pathway to economic independence. As we've talked about what's happening with the federal workforce, we've had conversations about how do we promote business creation as a pathway for folks who are transitioning out of federal service. If we can move to the next slide. I think last year we saw, I don't want to go over this because you did this so well in the video. But I think what we accomplished was a shared understanding of the needs that we have to grow our sports for our entrepreneurs and what we saw in many of our of the regional facilities was the responsiveness and nimbleness of third party operators. I'm trying to remember I don't believe any of the facilities we saw were government operated they were involved University run private sector run and Non-profit at Frederick that they were supported by a $9 million federal grant as well as ongoing Government time. So what we saw was was what's possible and which is what we want to achieve moving forward. You know, Mr. Smith talked earlier about the needs to continue to leverage our facilities with smaller flexible labs, shared equipment, providing technical assistance and more robust programming, launching regular networking education and technology events, and connecting tenants with other resources, academic, private sector, nonprofit, and more. And in the last year, it gave us an opportunity not only to work with you, but to continue our research into the best options to address this need. So what's needed and what you'll see. What you may see, because I don't want a great protocol, but I don't think it's clear. I don't think it's a secret that the administration and the council have a shared desire to achieve the goals we've laid out with proven effective actions by increasing the use and effectiveness of our county own incubators to provide that more robust programming education and that we've arrived at targeted technical support and to establish those partnerships. I talked about a minute ago and I think what we haven't said, which is underlying all of this, is throughout this entire effort in our minds, how do we create more access historically underrepresented communities and entrepreneurs? How do we get people into entrepreneurship but I'm the one with the barriers in front of them. Anything you want to add to. and entrepreneurs. How do we get people into entrepreneurship and those of the barriers in front of them? Anything you want to add, Judy, to that? I think we've covered the demand and the fact that we've looked at various ways to provide it. The main thing is we're working as hard as we can at the county. and we think that we get it up to the next level. We need extra support. We could have come in and asked for a lot more money for county government or other government related partners but we think the way to make the best use of the county's money is to bring in folks who do this all the time and nothing else and not just facility management and not just programming but everything and I think that's we feel that that will best address what we've all already talked about several times and identified as the needs. Thank you Judy Judy and I know we talked to you to talk earlier about the Internet and soft landing program we do have a read in this process to formalize that, you know, how that works. I know we have referrals from international trips, MCDC makes referrals in and others make the referrals in, but through this process, it's not also much that there's a need to include formalization of that process through this effort. And what that means is, as with any of these programs, it's having someone who has the bandwidth and capacity and expertise to leverage a program, for example, how do you get through FDA? The people we visit in Korea, in Taiwan, in any place around the world, have many of the same questions that our residents and businesses in Germantown and Silver Spring and Bethesda have. And so if you have a webinar, kind of networking event, I think that does this regularly, and provide in person networking for us here, but can also make it available to networks in other countries. We have been asked for that. We communicate with accelerators through our international trade missions and they want that type of information. And in the Rockville Innovation Center in particular, just because of its central location near a metro and restaurants for people from overseas who haven't yet purchased a home and they're pointing their toe in the water. They're very interested in being in a rockville. I think we have the numbers, but I think it was something like 90% of individual and they will do co-working space. People who want to come in have come into us from international, through the Global Gateway Program, Mr. Hartman, reference where their first year participation in in the innovation center is covered by the Maryland Department. I'm coming on with Desjogh. And as of last week, as a follow-up to Mr. Lasses and Mr. Madeline, of beginning of relationship building with our sister city in Desjogh fall of 2023 and our travel there last year they visited here last year we traveled back to sign an economic development agreement and we they just came over on short notice last Monday and opened an office in the Rockbow Innovation Center their first city of Desion International Trade Office. They immediately took the last remaining space. We have a wait list at Rockville Innovation Center. The assistant mayor flew in for hours and flew out to see it and said, can I have, we gave him an office and he wanted to ruin this size. He said, I want to bring companies here. That was last Monday. This, I think two days ago, we had a visitor from Day-Jong come in with another company. He's up at German, I know he visited German town today and met where we have three Korean American companies working in wet lab space and he's looking at opening an office here. So that's a little bit of a side but it's definitely related. It's part of the demand and part of the opportunity for each of these companies no matter where their investment is coming from our hope is that they'll grow jobs for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial staff here and if it's people who have been working for the federal government, that's an opportunity too. So the innovation centers are a supported, affordable way for overseas companies to join our community, and they value our highly diverse and educated workforce. And the same services we provide them would be welcomed by those who are long-time Montgomery residents. Should we watch your video? Yes, this video we found posted late last night and it's just a quick clip with a from Montgomery College courtesy Montgomery College in Stout Public and this you met her Miss Dagger, but was on your video. I'm solicited to testimonial we saw last night and seen for the second time here. Bye. Being part of the Dermontario Innovation Center really allows or provide an opportunity for many scientists that have novel idea and innovation to get together and collaborate with each other. You know opens lots of doors for startup to brainstorm, collaborate and you know build the infrastructure to go to the next level and grow. Thank you with that collaboration, with that connection, with all the variables that GIC provides. What do you see for the future? What's the innovative on the horizon for PAMC diagnostics? To make it really short is to bring precision medicine tool at the population scale. We want to make it affordable. We want to make these tools and diagnostic tools and prevention tools available for every individual and make it accessible for them. order to meet that goal. There are layers of activities that we are doing on daily basis. One of them is to improve our technology, to address all those limitations and shortages that we have, and currently facing in clinical realm. The other thing that we are doing to really scale up is to incorporate AI technology and what I mean by that we do use AI technology to do the interpretation of the test results that we do. We use AI technology to look at the other factors that can contribute to human disease such as environmental factors and you know lifestyle modifiers that can contribute to all all those human disease. Wow, Dr. Dagger, I think about that leveraging current technology, enhancing kind of future technology all in the vein of ensuring that there's affordable, accessible, equitable, you know, kind of opportunities to address major health care issues. Dr. Dagger, thank you so much for being here today. It's been a. I was pretty good. That's a new new chat. And by the way, she referenced AI and technology. So one of the companies in Germantown wants to keep their office in Germantown and also take a coworking space at the AI Innovation Center so they can be closer. I mean, it's not that far from the AI. But so they're willing to pay for two different things of office space, which shows Anita, it's not just about the space that gets to our budget request. It's about the programming and the experts. We want to bring in more AI experts as well as more pharma experts as well well as people in other industry sectors. Great. Thank you so much for that presentation. I think I hear there's a lot of things that we can say that from the council, from all over, from the CanX executive team, they're all in conjunction, they're all complement each other and it speaks highly of this entire effort. Before I open it up to questions, I will imagine all of us. I can now wait for March 13th to see the actual budget. Let's see how this relates to this. But the whole point of having this session is to understand and have all the background before we have the actual conversation on the budget because it just help us adjust for the information. I also want to thank them, the Montgomery Economic Development Corporation for being here and for being with us during the tours that we have done. So thank you for that and I congratulate you guys for here. can you, and I know so we're going to be expecting in the coming budget, details and price tag on this question of the third party that Council staff has brought up and you guys have read. They haven't somebody specialized in the older government's marketing, the coaching, the 101 coaching, and so on and so forth. So that's great. And I love that you mentioned, you, Mr. Harmonis, but the points on the international trips. I went with a kind of executive to Taiwan, because remember class also has been in Asia with a dementia report. But we need to have a strong connection and show how these trips have resulted in actual contracts and how many people having employed. Where are they gonna be placing the headquarters in Miss Costa, she touched on that also briefly, but we need somebody who can put all that together with one strategy, otherwise it's so confusing. Everybody's doing one thing in the outland, it just doesn't help. And I love that Miss Miller touched on the need of always look, although we're Montgomery County, we're better when we promote original assets. Yes, we like to compete, but it's really better when we say, okay, this is what we have in Montgomery County, but we also have this amazing effort seen college part with Quentin. And then in Virginia and Northern Virginia, and this is why people to the New Guinea-LDC region versus Boston or the Bay Area. That's very important. So we do need that third party expert to understand that, put in politics aside and see how we can all be collaborative. So I appreciate that you mentioned that. And with the comment of MCDC, look, I went, and I just gonna put it out there. Because why not? On the, when we talk about the third party, I think we do need MCDC, as we had done and discussed this many times in different work sessions. You know, they need to look at the big picture getting all this big employers coming in. This area is so specific that I do think it needs to be an independent third party agent, expert, whatever you want to call it. Looking at facing a specific without being distracted with anything else that we're dealing with. We have the Small Business Center that do amazing job and we want them to continue working with the Small Businesses. We have NCDC and we want them to continue working with these big companies, attracting them to come here. But this space needs to be respected and all of us need to help help any wall and CDC needs to help. And the small business center needs to help any wall. And so once we talk about third party, I just want to put that up there. That it needs to be next. With that, my friends, I'm going to start from my, from my, what is it? That council member welcome. Okay, I'm gonna start from my that's a member welcome okay thank you I think this was really a very informative and I so appreciate the tours that we went on this past year really was eye-opening just how much we really have in Mackebrick County and where we can really improve. So I'm going to follow up first on the third party discussion. Of course, it means we need the right third party, the innovation centers have gone kind of back and forth through their history of internal external and I think it just really, We need to make sure that we have the right partner in there. And I think there are certainly a lot of advantages to a third party from the perspective of their focus every day when they wake up in the morning that they have a long job, right? So I think that's important. I would say the caution would be because our system is a little bit segregated in that we have MCEDC, we have the Business Center, we have the finance piece. There are a lot of different pieces to our economic development. And whoever that third party is has to have relationships with every party and strong working relationships because if we go back to the concept of no wrong door, the third party has to be very cognizant of where all those other doors are. And so I think that that's just something if we move forward in this direction. I will be looking at that to make sure that that's in place. And then from what we have and what we need, it was so apparent in our tours of our competing or companion. Our neighbors. Our neighbors. Our neighbors to the to the north and south and east and west. The programming piece. And I think that it was a Frederick, I think, that what really hit me was the one-on-one consulting. And because there's an accountability piece tied into that, where they're consultant or their liaison, the businesses, one person. They, first off, it's just somebody to talk with, talk through all the problems with, but the accountability piece, especially for entrepreneurs who are so good at the technical aspect that very often they will, they don't generally move to the business part of their, of the job because either they are not interested in it, they're not good at it. And so the one-on-one consulting to me is one of the most important things that we can do. The connections are important because you want to make sure that we, I mean, we have all these resources in the region, I think having this regional aspect is important. And so our entrepreneurs will naturally want to connect with people, but it goes back to that one-on-one consultant will be able to be the one to know that. So I think that's important. And I think that's the soft landing program, I think is really important. And I appreciate the connection to our international recruitment efforts and making sure that we have someone paying attention to that. I know you do. Just one question. When we were at Germantown, we talked a lot about increasing space. I thought that there was a project already in place for that expansion. Where are we with that? Here, so the council did approve $1.4 million to convert 10 offices into four wet labs and you when you all tour it that you saw the four new spaces. I think what we've been talking about is there's been further. We need to go further and as Ms. Miller mentioned, and what we need to do is figure out how to take, not just have single lab, but how do we build shared benches. So I believe it was up that Johns Hopkins involves more. We saw what a shared lab space looks like. It's expensive. And so that is part of the proposal in the three million. But certainly we didn't want an expert that understands what that like and not just have the county built shared lab and hope it works. So, and we're looking at experts in that and then also we've had increased demand from some German town-based companies who are working in satellite and advanced many back here in prototype. And we've gone up to the place that you visited launch board, but also a couple other facilities in Baltimore to see what and are talking with them preliminarily about potentially having a satellite location that as part of our not with again, and how they expenditure would be the anticipation. But as part of in making the best use of that other half of the German town innovation center, small flexible lab space potentially. And if we confirm what we think is demand for small space where you can do 3D prototyping or a device, okay, I saw it yesterday where you do self-s saliva test for diabetes and you could do that kind of thing. Instead of sending that work outside the county, possibly doing that, they are for relatively inexpensive. So it's small shared, not only biotech, but as we diversify our economy and want to make sure that everything grows that may be part of our produce. Which is the commercialization of that product. OK, great. Thank you. Yes, well, nonetheless. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate you having this work session at this point in time, because I remember last year we had received the budget, and there were a number of changes to the budget, both within MCEDC, but then new programs within the incubators in the business center. And it was really difficult to weigh the merits and get a deep dive in real time with a large budget ask. And this tees up that budget very nicely. So appreciate that and appreciate the observations from our, you know, we're just developing it as well. I want to dive into some of the numbers a little bit so to get some clarity because I think we all, we all know the importance of this work. We all know we are the largest life sciences bio hub in country and glad to know that Miss Costello, the county's work in particular overseas is varying fruit. We knew it needed to be planted and needed to be tended to, but clearly it's paying off. Congratulations. That's great. And so on page three in the packet, there is the data that the incubator outcomes and the capital raised from $190.20 million at 1.5 million and the new tenants and the jobs supported. Interesting data and someone to explain what that means in story and narrative. Specifically the capital race in general or the all of it is I think what is most helpful is what does success look like. That is the overarching question that was trying to figure out. And I see different numbers that could answer that, but in total, what is success and how does this support? Happy to just you want to cover first, the basic data. That's funny first, but I will talk about what I shared. I'm just simple question, it's a simple answer. I agree. Yeah, so there's short answer. These are the numbers based on, there's a lot behind the numbers to your, these are the numbers based on actual tenants on site. I will go down to the bottom of the graduate. So what does success mean? So why are we even in this space? The idea I think that everybody says, as you have an idea, this is innovation, and there will talk maybe a little bit when we talk about the founders grants next week, that there are many opportunities, as we all know, for entrepreneurs who aren't focused on innovation. But why do we support innovation like biotech? It's because it's a technology that we think will be scaled and grow jobs, but that is too novel, takes a lot of investment, and the idea is too young and early and risky for a bank to give alone, for venture capital to give alone, and there's no revenue coming in certainly for a biotech, so it gets through FDA and guess guess what? So all those reasons that's why we support it. So at the end of the day success is growing jobs and having jobs in accounting. For some of these biotechs in particular a lot of investment and help is needed for every job. It doesn't grow jobs as quickly as a mospinatus-notice or something different. So, but success is typically viewed as job growth, commercialization of products. Our number three is based on patents and investment and capital raised by graduates. I know the 2023 figure, I believe is Decaf, who some of you've heard about, will you spoke at your, at our thing. So, and talked about the value of German town innovation. He's working on an oncology drive, raised 20 million in 2023, that brought him up to 60 million in investment. And maybe I don't know the current jobs, but I think he has at least 30 people working in German town in a Minkoff lab. So that would be considered a success. They had an idea, a patent, what also will be success is one and I think he's addressed this in our lab when it's having a positive effect for patients. But from an economic development standpoint, it's jobs. There's a company or cellics that I believe might be the 2022 numbers. They in 2022 they went public. Some of you may have visited them. They started in our Germantown Innovation Center and were there for a number of years and then moved to Watkins Mill. Now their headquarters, if you look on their website, you'll see I think Red Wing, California. However, their R&D Center is a King Farm and their labs are at King Farm. And we visited them with, I think someone from MCDC was here, but the mayor brought though that it's technically in the city, and they are supporting jobs for 20 some people. They are in clinical trials. Ultimately, it's CAR-T technology, it also will help patients. Graduates for the most part should be someone who has received a benefit of more affordable space and ideally, particularly if we bring on more bandwidth, robust programming and connections to get to the market faster with our technology innovation, founders grants to get to a faster. A couple times it's a graduate because the idea is not going to work and we've asked them to move out. Since when I came, which was right after COVID so people had been studied, for a couple years the majority of graduates if I think about it, and you can have been, are being asked to move to commercial space. There's one in particular I think that will not be a successful business. And then it's our time to say, hey, we want for you, your county resident, but we need to help you move on. Who measures? Who says that? Who tells the business, the entrepreneur that thank you, your time is up, you've tried, right, and business has high failure rate, right, so we have to understand that, but who judges that? So, so right now it is, I can answer that. Yeah. That's the exact, currently right now it is the business center that If I work with closely with Richard and Alicia, and we consult with the county executive and the county executive's office. So we do have, for example, we do have a business in there right now that it's nine months past two, on paying their license agreement. And so we've been working with them for a long time. But ultimately, it's usually a conversation. Hey, listen, this is what we're seeing. This is what we're hearing. And we've been spending multiple months with you to find the resources to make the connections. But rather than renewing the license agreement, because we only do one year license agreement sometimes to do shorter if the business asks us. But we're coming close to like two months, we're going to need to renew it or not. And so usually it's less of your out. more of we don't see this as a good opportunity for us to continue to require you to pay something that you're not able to do so and your current growth model design. And so usually it's less of your out. It's more of, we don't see this as a good opportunity for us to continue to require you to pay something that you're not able to do so. And your current growth model does not suggest that's going to go there as usually an amicable decision. They're like, you're right. And so we work with them to find what's the next step after they leave. But because there's no long-term commitment, We're all free to be able to say, as is your comes due, like what is the next step for us? So in other words, you're saying that, Blaine, a ten. term commitment, we're all free to be able to say as this year comes to do like what is the next step for us. So in other words, you're saying that like a tenant is in other words, unable to pay rent, it shows a distress on the business and that you're then engaging and going to be doing that. And we're doing that not after sorry, we've been doing that for nine months. It wasn't. I understand that understand that. I apologize. I should try to underpriced lip it into terminology that might be more understanding it. Right. And I should have maybe clarified this. I think we don't have tenants, they're members, because we have license agreements. It's just a helpful terminology piece, but I understand how we all slide into that. And even I do that sometimes, but just for the public's good and the public understanding their members of our network through license agreements, not paying brand or tennis. One understood. Add to what Judy and Jean has my last. So when we talk last year, we talked about the the metrics, the jobs created, the revenue of generator, capital raised, the private equity investment, sales, for patents, commercialization, there are lots of ways to measure the success of innovation. Your other question was, why is this important? It's, when we, for an economic development strategy, it's everything for how do we support and nurture and connect with the companies who are here to understand their needs, how do we recruit and attract companies to come to Montgomery County and establish those relationships, maybe abroad, to let companies know who we are and what we offer. And a key piece of jurisdictions that have a successful strategy is what does that innovation ecosystem look like to bring entrepreneurs into the system, provide them the early supports that a company needs in a very risky place where financing and supports are needed, that gets them to capitalization and gets them to market. As you said, not everyone's going to be successful. But all of our success stories are fantastic stories. They've added, definitely, to our economy. They've brought in jobs, and they continue to grow. But that's how I'd answer your question. Why is this important? I would say also on that company just picking on the company that Jean and I were just discussing, we did spend time with the company as he alluded to before they became past room and question the business model. Our business liaison's in addition to programs staff, our business liaison spend time with them. I spent time with this particular company because even as a government, you could see challenges with the business model. The value of having an expert who does this day in and day out is that they would be able to focus even sooner and more in depth. And ideally, this company had been a minute before the two of us were involved. But ideally, you're still going to have, not every company at third party would bring in, will be successful, but that should even enhance the success. And council member Baalkumman, I used to sit in as members of the Montgomery County. There was a business innovation network a few years ago on the recruitment committee and give opinions. A third party, we would ask Nuddle to bring business experts as part of the vetting process on a regular business. As county government, we would rather not be making the yay or nay despite our expertise or not on a regular basis. And so I think that's another reason why that might be helpful. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it and very helpful. So I have two questions and they're interrelated. Is there a wait list for our incubators? There is. So the Rockville Innovation Center, which is currently 99% occupied, has a wait list both internally for businesses that wish to grow and businesses that are interested in locating only in Rockville because as Miss Costello said earlier, the amenities nearby are the internationalists. So we're at nine to 10 businesses on that. There is no wait list at Germantown, because we still have two or three labs available in plenty of offices, and there is no wait list at SilverSpring. So it really is just Rockville. Sure. And clearly, having that information is important because it provides more context as why space is needed. And if this is not performing or isn't succeeding based on bright business metrics, then there's many others that want to be in there. And so moving looking ahead as the budget will be introduced shortly, and I know that has not been an easy feat ongoing still I presume to a certain degree not necessarily your portfolios, but there are other moving parts as we see thousands of our neighbors losing their jobs, particularly within FDA and NIH and ecosystems around there. How do you see these programs fitting in and providing opportunities for our neighbors who have the skills and the talent, just not the space or the opportunities? So we've, we've begun to fence what I think is a fantastic partnership with the county chamber with with MCDC, with workforce Montgomery, and others, Roptal, Gainesburg, and other partners in this space. Because we're working towards creating that, that one stop resource for people leaving federal equipment. A key part of this strategy that's emerging is how do we connect with our business community to connect them with people leaving federal employment and and how do we promote business creation and all that to give people multiple paths, whether it's available jobs in the economy, connecting with highly skilled people who have been in the federal system, with what highly technical jobs in the private sector and making that connection because it's not it's not always an easy transition. But a major plank that we've talked about in our means and we have another meeting tomorrow. Be happy and include your staff. We are we are jelling. And through leadership of folks at MCDs and Antelope Franco and others and anti-fathers' stone. We have a plan so we can start sharing that with you. I think in light of what's happening on the federal, I think I mentioned earlier, there is no better time than today than in this budget to really look hard at our business supports, whether it's attraction or retention or whether it's assisting entrepreneurs, because those entrepreneurs grow into the big companies. And it's an investment we've been eking along with a budget for the last 10 years. And I think we have an opportunity now to start something big that will get us attention for the sports we provide. It's timely conversations. The Lageries General of Madam Chair and I know we'll talk a lot more about it. I hope we talk more about it in the budget in the weeks to come. So thank you. And thank you for the reports that you guys tried. And some other sales. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you everyone for your commentary, the reports, and Madam Chair for the time being. I'll have both the sentiments of my colleagues. It's so important, given our political landscape, that we remain at the forefront, especially in this sector. I know that we are very proud of being the third largest biotech in the nation, but just thinking proactively and strategically about the investment that will maximize the return on these resources that we are allocating to grow our economy and these businesses. And so I wanted to ask a few questions and they're in order based on the packet. But I wanted to start with that clip you showed at the end from President Williams. What happened with that clip? Where did you find it? And then I found it last night at 11 o'clock when I should have been asleep. Like it, it's apparently he has a new vote chat video series. Yeah. Yeah. It was the first. It was the vote time. That was the first time. And I, what did you do with that clip? What did I do? So I barely had any time, but I couldn't stop myself. I said, my Montgomery County government is proud to have, and I referenced the company up at German tab where they can interact with MC students and faculty. I heard you're visiting maybe up there next week, by the way, so we could do my top offline. But so, and I haven't had time to follow up with the team that you did that to ask them to help us. But it's the first time I saw it, but I don't even know how I saw it, but that's exactly the way it is. So, Tony, you're LinkedIn. Thank you, Sam. Oh, well good. I wanna make sure that we are retweeting it, and I don't know if we're coming up with any hashtags about our incubator or a biotech corridor. I just want us to be more intentional. We have this OLO report. We have the help of Mark Graves, I'm not sure what the next fiscal year is going to look like, but we have these recommendations. And so I just want to ensure that we're maximizing and proactively thinking about how we're going to utilize every aspect of these folks. Spreading the word. Talk about our success stories. I believe that. I completely agree. Yes, yes. And so I also, you know, you spoke about the third party and who's potentially going to streamline all of these efforts and put a plan together to basically oversee this sector. Do we know if we have, are we going to see something in the budget when the county executive releases it about what that RFP or the scope would look like if there's going to be money in the budget to support this strategic plan and then someone to execute the plan? I think I may have already let the Canada of the bag that I'm broken vertical. So there will be something in the budget. I'm happy to have, and we would like to offer either individual or less, you know, because we are talking about a contract and potential contractors. So maybe there's another format we can use to talk about. Yes, definitely. Okay, good. And then, you know, I know that we met a few of our members in the incubators. Do we have demographics on the businesses who are occupying these spaces? Yeah, yes, we do glad that. Oh, okay. All right, if we can get that information. Okay. And what you might be more interested in that we might have to do a little digging. That's why I paused is. Biotech, for example, has many. More people working at various levels, including C sweep, but not necessarily the CEO. be good to know diversity, not only in the lead of the top person, but in that founder or the owner, but also in the other team members. Definitely, you have the entire... Yeah, so I appreciate that. So we have information on the business ownership demographics. We do not necessarily collect the information of like C-suite employees. We do for any business, but, we all know them really well and so we could certainly work with them. So to Ms. Kassel's point, the broader demographics may take time, but we certainly share the ownership demographics. Oh, that would be helpful. And then I think one of my colleagues may have answered this, but how do we measure the overall impact of the incubators? You know, when I was looking at the chart and I saw five of those incubators generated a hundred million. Now, I see we have even more incubators, only one that's generating investments after they leave. And so I'm wondering if there are any contingencies that we've put into our relationships with these incubators. You know, are they required to get space after they outgrow this space? Do we get a percentage or do we have any invested interest in, you know, their proprietary information that they create while in our incubator. And so I'm just wondering what the long-term investment is or if we just grow them, pick them out and they make money. They actually talk about the money they make and then they nothing to show for it once they're gone. So the first answer is no, the county does not take any stake in the growth of our businesses in terms of their intellectual property or what happened afterwards. The county is not invested in the economic development of our ecosystem in that manner. Like we provide the space, the programming, the connections, even though we would like to see the BMORO bus, but certainly if the business growth is such that a business such as DECA graduates, we help them find space, we help them like stay in the county. That is the goal is as a job, because it stays in the county, but certainly the county does not have any ownership or take of their IP or their growth beyond the benefit of having another great business in the county. I would just add, given the table, and I think this was produced by OLO from the data we gave. I would also say this is like facility level data, like that's a way to look at it. Certainly if we have a different way to approach success, that would be different level data. But I'm sorry, I'm looking at whatever this pages and the packet on page three. I would divide a line under new tenants. If I were making this table only because the job supported by tenants, the graduates and the capital raised is outside of our control. And even if you have a third party doing it, it's outside of their control. That is the business cycle that is business growth, that is just some of risk that comes to making business. And that's why you see fluctuations. We don't. And even if you have a third party doing it, it's outside of their control. That is the business cycle, that is business growth, that is just some of risk that comes to making business. And that's why you see fluctuations. We don't know how fast businesses are gonna graduate, but I think using Mr. Glass as terminology of like, cultivating, like we wanna see the ecosystem be able to help businesses grow as fast as possible, as quickly as possible, or, And I think this is fine to say fail as quickly as possible, because that way they're not investing 10 years of their time in life into a product that's never going to come to commercialization. as quickly as possible or, and I think this is fine to say, fail as quickly as possible because that way they're not investing 10 years of their kind of life into a product that's never going to come to commercialization. And so I think what I would say, maybe I'm putting on a slightly different ad here is that in the future years, we want to see how that ecosystem is growing this better and moving these businesses along faster. It's not in all of our control. But no, to answer question like this data is kind of showing like how we've thrown the facilities to be able to take more tenants. not in all of our control. But no, to answer your question, this data is kind of showing how we've thrown the facilities to be able to take more tenants more. Sorry, there I go. More members, more growth from that angle, but that's because that's what we have control. And our team does have control and prospects and how do we get businesses in the door and how do we work with them that are here. I would say the rest of that table shows what could happen and what's possible. Yes. They work with us. Yeah. I think it's a good testimonial almost, but are there other jurisdictions who do have that sort of relationship with their incubators where they are taking a claim, a state? So I can tell you just anecdotally from my experience during the years, when you're an early stage company and raising money and you finally get to the point where you can have a venture capital supplement, many investors do not want to deal with whether it's county government or crowd sourcing investors. They want what they call a clean tap table. And so it's discouraged because it makes their deal and their opportunity. It's a barrier to raising investment. Though you are not the first to ask the people, the incubators who take that or through the universities and their tech transfer offices. As if you probably heard the by-doll act, they think it was came out after Google and some others, but universities realized they let a lot of opportunity and incoming funding disappear. It's the university's technology and different. The other thing I'll tell you is that we the our friends and to work with them and partner with them at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing, we promote them and we promote the fact that they have a little incubator within their institute. We have been told by a confidence that they want a partner with the University of Maryland IHC. They like the fact that they have an incubator there, but would we give them separate space? Because it's easier for them to set up a partnership outside the University framework. Many of the entrepreneurs working in innovation may have taken the idea from the federal government, it might be an NIH, or from their home university, and they wanna keep it under the control. So in some ways the short answer is no but it's for a positive reason if that makes sense. The other thing you're asking about tracking, so one thing I do think we would ask a third party to do, again bandwidth and resources are also part of this, is track reporting on follow on data and when graduates graduate on a more regular, multi-year basis. Our current FEMA has gone back as much as a can through the records to find out, but I can't tell you every tenant. And I sat in the shady grub incubator where I was a biotech and I was working for the state 2014. I don't know all 30 companies that were there, And I'm not sure that we have those records or archive. I'm sure we might have a couple other people that did well that we don't know about. So reporting that it would help with that bandwidth and the other thing I would say is that when we've talked to successful incubators, they have had full-time staff that are salespeople, that are selling the space, as much as we talk about it, we think it's an opportunity. They're out knocking on doors and finding the best candidates. And they have full-time people doing that, which we don't do. That's why we take incoming and referrals and we talk about and go out a little bit, but we don't have that perfect stuff for it. So again, where you have a focused effort, and that's part of someone that reporting and the prospect work really, I think also there could be an advantage. Not for any third party, but for someone who has that and who within the county contracts obsessed, this is a deliverable we want you to achieve. How do we determine whether incubators are the most effective way to grow businesses compared to our other economic development strategies like our grant programs taxes, incentives, workforce development programs, how are we comparing them across our whole suite of offerings? So I want to answer by saying all of the above our importance, we're here to talk about the incubators. Monday will be here to talk about the grant program, which is shaped me up to be a very successful and enlightening program for us. But one of our recommendation last year was to create an innovation network where we would, or there is connection to our higher ed to our private innovation centers to to our MCDC and others in the system about what measures across the board do we need to promote as ways to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. So, I can fill in the gaps, but just from where we've been, you know, again, we're, we are trying to put in place a methodology to get us that integrated approach to draw on the expertise that's not all in government is only one duty. And so, so this is it. All of these different buckets. It's going to be talking the grants on Monday. We're talking about incubators today. It would be helpful to understand what success looks like and which one is proofy to be the most successful investment based on ABC. That's a fair question. I'm gonna understand how you prioritize. I do think it is a together. I was very happy. And as I think you may know, this grant program that we're talking about, my name will go into the weeds. But the deadline for the grants just closed. And the data and the review process that the law has spent hours on with us, along with a couple CEOs from MCEDC's board and the third party team. We already, without the time to see all the data, which I'd like to do over the summer and it won't be in time for this, like you said. We already have seen what we want, that a number of our innovation center members applied for these grants. So when you were there, some of the people who you met have applied for the grants. And what you'll see, what you'll learn Monday is they didn't just apply for money, they applied, and we asked them to, they gave us a dollar amount tied to a very specific commercialization project. So they said we'll move it forward. And I just today got numbers that I'll share on Monday on in response to our questions. So we have, you know, we're taking them at the word how many employees do you represent? And how many employees will you have if the, the same thing about capital, if the project is successful. successful and believe I skimmed it very quickly, I came in right before that those numbers are significantly higher than the innovation, censored numbers that you just saw. However, they couldn't do that project if they were not in the innovation center because they couldn't afford commercial space in a five to 10 year commitment. So it is very intertwined. I'd also say the access to capital, which I agree every as a smeller eloquently said every entrepreneur is either looking for customers or investment or a lot. However, the majority of those that do not have customers because they have to get their product more developed can't get investment unless they have a proven prototype, unless they do FDA trials. And so bringing 20 BC companies and BC headquarters and sticking them with Montgomery County as some of Suggeston might out is not going to do the trick. It's the type of capital that we are giving them that is helpful. And I did do a high level scheme of the firms recommended in the packet that we did talk about that, but you might want to address. So in the founders, or in the LA program, it was serving specifically by their description, black and Latinx founders, and multi-million dollars went to 19 companies. Get the numbers. I'll have them by Monday so we can get back. Yeah. But what I'm saying is we're leveraging, so how you measure success is that number of companies is that number of future employees is that number it's a little bit of everything and that's the short answer to. My last question. Always, we're always looking at how we're doing compared to other regions. Um, we went from five businesses, um, graduating in 22 in 23 and 24. There was only one. How are our graduation numbers comparing to other incubators? Any similar? they're growing. So I don't have the exact stats on other incubators. We did have two queries in the last week from one of the incubators. You visited and we've not yet figured out why they just came in this week, actually. I do know if you remember visiting from thinking I'm thinking particularly in Baltimore, those folks are going to be there for the most part for a couple of years. I imagine we are about the same. I don't have those stats and we might be able to get them probably not within the next week, but we might be able to get them. It's it's it's a it's a good question. No, again, we're a little bit chicken and eggs. Since I was with you, we visit Johns Hopkins, but I visited the University of Maryland. You visit the construction site. That is now open. It was something like $15 million for that one floor, for one floor of labs. And the companies that are there have to pay above our market maybe by twice rate. They have to have a lot more money there further ahead and they are going to be there for a couple years. So if I went up to them and asked them for graduation rate, we might be ahead of them because it's just an age of the day. Yeah. Thank you so much for this very constructive session and we look forward to more details around the budget. I just want to make sure people know that for Monday's session on March 10 is going to be very exciting with MCEDC and on the grants that we just referred to, we're going to be on the second floor. Okay, because of all that construction, we're going to be use Bell Andy just making sure people know about it. With that, thank you so much for the staff and it's session yesterday.