The Foundry, a Salt Lake City training ground for entrepreneurs, is challenging some long-held notions about how startup incubators should work--and captivating everyone from Armenian businessmen to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.
Two years ago Scott Paul was taking evening MBA classes at the University of Utah while holding a day job at a tourism site when he kept noticing lackluster racks of brochures (for deals on local ski tours and the like) in hotel lobbies. It was April of 2010 and the iPad had just arrived on the scene. Paul had an idea: “Why not slap these iPads into hotel lobbies and have them be digital concierges?"
Today, his company, Armor Active, makes iPad kiosks, point-of-sale systems, and kiosk-friendly apps for some of the biggest brands in the world. The company has sold more than 20,000 units and is on track to hit $3 million in revenues this year. The ballooning customer roster is a virtual who’s who of the corporate world: Estee Lauder, Virgin, ING, Amazon, and BMW, to name a few. Guests signing in at Macworld’s 2012 iWorld show in San Francisco did so on iPads sheathed in Armor Active’s enclosures, and LeBron James’s new high-design Unknwn sneaker store in Miami features 45 iPads, all housed in the company’s Evolve kiosks.
The company is one of a host of new ventures to emerge from the Foundry, a University of Utah-sponsored peer-based training ground for entrepreneurs that’s challenging some long-held notions about how business incubators should work. University of Utah post-doc Rob Wuebker and the program’s other founders believe they’ve hit upon a method of fostering entrepreneurs that is not only dirt cheap and easily replicable but--crazy as it sounds--also has the potential to catalyze urban redevelopment and foster the growth of the creative class in places with fledging hipness quotients, from Salt Lake City to Armenia. Fast Company
