Ever wondered what it’d be like to have your very own, up-and-running science lab? Audrey Reid of Imbibe Solutions is no longer asking herself what it would be like, because the dream has become a reality: Imbibe now has a functioning lab, complete with white coats, oddly-shaped glassware, and perhaps most importantly, beer.

This Wednesday, she was kind enough to give me a tour of the space and tell me a little…

BFD of the week: the Financial Times just published their MBA program rankings, and Darden was named third in the world for entrepreneurship. That's the larger ecosystem we at the i.Lab are a part of. Pretty amazing, no?

FT's rankings took into account both school and alumni support for entrepreneurs, and measured success by looking at the percentage of MBA grads who did these five things:

1. Started a company.

2…

On a journey leading ever out and into the world, it can seem counterintuitive to look homeward for our next steps. But for Cristina Velez of MyPallay, that’s just what happened when a trip home to Bolivia (as well as some revelatory customer interviews) led her to reconsider and pivot the focus of her developing fashion venture.

Velez, who has long been interested in the ways fashion and social impact come together…

In response to Sara Whiffen’s workshop this morning on effectuation, I thought I’d expound a little more on this juicy latinate word and why I think it holds some crucial secrets for how to be a person.

Effectuare, in Latin, just means ‘to cause to happen.’ That’s what we’re working with, and ultimately what we’re doing here: making our ventures happen, making the little things that make our ventures happen…

I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, I wasn’t thinking about how to start a company. (About how to start a relationship, or get on the tennis team, maybe… but those are other stories of learning to “fail fast, often and cheap.”)

For at least four of this year’s accelerator participants, however, starting a company in high school isn’t a question; it’s a reality—and one…

Before we’ve seen all the possible ways business happens, it can be easy to imagine all business as happening in a B2C, or business-to-consumer, framework. The lemonade stand is a pretty quintessential example of selling B2C: you make your lemonade and sell it directly to the people walking down Main Street (and not, say, to Paradox Pastry or Bodo's).

Earlier this week, Holmes-McCall Biotechnologies announced…

What does it mean when your main competitor changes their website to look eerily similar to yours?

That’s a question Carrie Hodgkins of Dovetail Digital Films was forced to ask herself when another company—perhaps the only other company to offer something remotely similar to Dovetail’s product—changed their site’s design and wording to look more like Dovetail’s, overnight.

The fact…

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dani Bchara of Caterwell (formerly The Daily Demand) about the company’s recent name change.

The change came as part of a rebranding effort, which the company decided to undertake after two months of interviews gave it a more refined understanding of its potential customers.

“Every interview, we could almost predict what they were going to say,” said Bchara during…

I didn’t expect to be working at the i.Lab this summer. I was actually looking to work at Shark Mountain—the coffee shop in the lobby—when I stumbled upon the i.Lab page. (My other leading job option was at a laundromat.)

But I’m a writer by trade, and while coffee and laundry services are honorable lines of work, something didn't feel right about knocking on those doors. (As Rick Kulow would say, my…