When a London-based startup that developed an all-in-one tool for communication, collaboration and employee engagement was looking to move its North American headquarters from Toronto to Southern California, it chose a new incubator in Irvine. The startup is Appoon LLC. The location is California State University-Fullerton’s second startup incubator, which stages its grand opening in Irvine on Nov. 15.
“CSUF’s incubator will give us a huge opportunity to work with … the finest talent in the country,” co-founder and Chief Executive Niaz Panhwar said. “The mentors are excellent, and the resources in the shape of talented student teams … will help us grow much faster.”
CSUF chose Irvine for its second incubator because it already owned two buildings in the city and because of a deep “gene pool” of entrepreneurs here, said John Bradley Jackson, director of its Center for Entrepreneurship, founder of its first startup incubator and a professor of entrepreneurship.
Plus, there’s a professional services support network of accountants, consultants and law firms, he said.
Irvine is “real tech-savvy. Biomedical, as well. And this makes for a really attractive startup community.”
Nuts and Bolts
The incubator will occupy 1,200 square feet on the first floor of one of the identical 70,000-square-foot buildings CSUF owns at 1 and 3 Banting. The top floor of the incubator building is rented by Western State Law School.
CSUF’s Auxiliary Services Corp. purchased the complex in 2013 for $30.5 million. It used to be the Banting Corporate Center and has housed the university’s Irvine campus since 2011. The other building contains remote classrooms for about 4,000 students, most studying business. CSUF has had a presence in South Orange County since 1989.
The Irvine incubator will supplement the existing one in Placentia. The Irvine location has the capacity to serve up to 20 startups a year, Jackson said. The categories of entrepreneurs it will take in are the same as in Placentia: the “rare student that’s ready,” alumni and community members with a CSUF family connection. Both take in early-stage startups in any genre, with potential to scale.
Jackson said some of the Placentia incubator residents might move to Irvine if it’s more convenient. Appoon is the first resident.
Appoon
Panhwar and his wife, Ayisha Fareed, who serves as chief technology officer, launched the company last year. Their first product, Intel Manager, hit the market in September. The software-as-a-service model offers different subscription options to various-sized companies. There’s also an app.
Intel Manager brings employee engagement and productivity tools under one platform. It helps corporations improve employee productivity, which leads to “solid” business growth and saves cost and time, Panhwar said. Its target market is employers struggling to engage employees and increase productivity.
The company has about 1,000 active users. Two entities recently came on board as clients: Carrefour S.A., a French multinational retailer, and CSUF. The founders have invested more than $250,000 and will be “actively looking for funding very soon,” Panhwar said.
They moved their headquarters to the U.S. because of their belief that America is the largest market for products like theirs and that “companies in the United States are more technology friendly compared to rest of the world.”
Before starting this company, they had an outsourcing company in Dubai that they eventually sold so they could work on Appoon full time.
Collaboration
Jackson said CSUF’s Irvine incubator will have a common mission with Applied Innovation’s Wayfinder incubator. Applied Innovation is UCI’s entrepreneurial center and housed at The Cove in University Research Park.
He also said the large CSUF student body—41,000—and business students in particular—10,000—make the university unique.
“That makes us special right there,” Jackson said. “The startup community is thriving from our perspective, and there’s a clear need for incubation support. It’s one thing to have a great idea or come up with a product. It’s another thing to build a company. An individual often has that idea, but it takes teams of people to build a company. And that’s where the incubator comes in, to help that startup make all the decisions necessary to go forward to launch.”
Jackson said both CSUF incubators will collaborate with existing OC incubators because, “We realize that we have a special responsibility for making an economic impact here in OC.”
Richard Sudek, UCI’s chief innovation officer and executive director of Applied Innovation, said he’s excited to see CSUF’s entrepreneurial activities expand into Irvine.
“This is another key example of the momentum behind scalable innovation in Orange County,” he said. “John Bradley Jackson and CSUF have a long legacy of producing great local startups and valuable experiences for their students. We look forward to continuing our strong entrepreneurially-focused partnerships in the years to come.”
