Spotlight on TCN “Graduate”
By Win Burke, President & CEO of Incentive Targeting
Incentive Targeting benefited tremendously from participating in TCN’s Venture Coaching Program because it gave the founding team an opportunity, under the mentorship of coaches experienced in raising funds and building businesses, to refine its business plan and its pitch to investors. It also directly led to my joining the team as their CEO. I was one of the panel of reviewers at one of their TCN presentations, and subsequently became involved in mentoring them. I quickly came to understand how compelling was their product, and how attractive the market opportunity, and concluded that I wanted to become involved full time to more directly and personally help them achieve success.
The people we met through working with TCN helped us secure funding by introducing us to members of several angel groups. These initial introductions led to a funding syndicate of eight angel groups, breaking new ground in angel investing in the New England region. In addition, one of the TCN contacts made industry introductions for us, leading to an agreement with our first grocery retail chain, Big Y, headquartered in Springfield, MA, which has become the springboard for our rapid growth.
