Cross Sector
April 24, 2024—For its 10th anniversary, the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) is expanding in a major way.
“We are moving along with the rest of the market—which is all about deployment,” current IN² Program Manager Sarah Derdowski said. “One of the hardest challenges in the cleantech industry is overcoming that last ‘valley of death,’ which is adoption. The expansion allows us to help adopters as well as startups tackle some of their biggest barriers—we are connecting the dots from nascent startup technology all the way through adoption. The goal is accelerating the pace by reducing barriers for startups and adopters.”
IN² is managed by the Wells Fargo Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC). Over the past 10 years, IN² has supported 12 cohorts of startup companies with up to $250,000 each in nondilutive funding. The companies use those funds to work with the world-class experts at NREL and the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center in St. Louis to improve, validate, and de-risk their technologies. Applicants are referred by the Channel Partner network, a group that includes more than 60 incubators, accelerators, and universities who collectively have access to more than 6,000 startups.
In 2024, IN² is evolving with a new track designed to help deploy clean energy technologies. The plan is to partner startups—potentially IN2 program alums—with companies and communities that want to adopt clean energy technologies. While the program will look to IN2 alums first, the key will be finding the technology each adoptee needs.