The Batten Incubator at the Darden School, is designed to support promising early-stage business ventures involving Darden MBA students. Click here for more information. If you have questions about the Incubator, please contact Philippe Sommer, Director of Entrepreneurship at the Darden School: .
is a resource for students seeking information about entrepreneurship in emerging regions.
encourages research with corporate and academic partners in topical areas consistent with the Institute’s mission of illuminating best practices in the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation.
The Batten Incubator Program
The Incubator has three primary objectives:
- Foster the formation and development of start-up businesses to the point of pursuing and obtaining significant third party investment support.
- Educate participants about the process of new venture development to improve their potential for future success.
- Create an entrepreneurial community to give students the experience of learning through mutual support, a process critical for sucessful entrepreneurship.
The Incubator is open to anyone within the University of Virginia community with an entrepreneurial business idea; entry is principaly but not exclusively via business concept and plan competitions held annually at Darden. Participation of a darden student in the leadership is generaly requiered.
Current Ventures in the Incubator
Below are descriptions of the current ventures within the Darden Incubator.
(*) An asterisk denotes Darden faculty and staff members. See below for other notations.
- VibeAgent
- OpSmart
- Bath By Me
- Tannia.com
- Nutegrity
- Gratitude Coffee
- [Your company]
- [Your company]
- [Your company]
VibeAgent
VibeAgent was founded in early 2006 to help people make more informed hotel booking decisions. Since then the company has recruited a small but talented team to help realize its vision. VibeAgent launched its site into private beta at in March 2007 and hasn’t looked back since.
We’re here to provide you with trustworthy hotel recommendations written by people (or as we like to call them, agents) who share your tastes and preferences, so you can make confident and successful lodging decisions. We’ve created a simple experiential search tool to help you quickly describe your ideal hotel experience. We’ve also developed a neat little learning algorithm that prioritizes the reviews of community members whose preferences match your own, and whose reviews have been deemed trustworthy.
Unlike most other travel sites, we don’t take any money from hotel chains to influence the order of our search results. Our search results are completely organic (yum!), as they are based entirely on the reviews of travelers that share your tastes and preferences.
Once you’ve found the hotel that’s best for you, we find you the best available rate by comparing quotes from many different transaction partners, both hotels and other travel e-commerce sites. When you book a hotel through VibeAgent, you can be confident we’re dedicated on getting you the best room rate available.
We also provide you with a simple user interface and a personalized social networking platform so you can create your own group of friends and colleagues with whom to share reviews and recommendations. You can even create and join groups of similar-minded people to share your experiences and receive good advice, or read reviews written by experts on the places you want to visit.
VibeAgent’s success is based on its community members contributing their honest opinions and experiences so everyone can benefit. We hope that you’ll see the value in becoming an active member of our community and take some time to share your experiences with your friends and colleagues. In other words, we hope you become a VibeAgent!
We believe we’ve created a better way for you to research, purchase, and share your hotel experiences. We hope you agree. Please let us know what you think – you can find a "feedback" link on every page of our site that you can use to share your ideas and opinions with us. We promise a personal reply to each and every email we get!
Best wishes from the VibeAgent team and we hope to see you on the inside!
Principals:
Adam Healey '05
Charles Seilheimer '05
Board of Advisors:
Matthias Hild*
OpSmart, LLC
, is a consumer health and nutrition company specifically positioned in the surgical health market. The company’s core business is to promote overall patient health prior to and following an elective surgical operation. is selling products designed for increased health, promotion of healthy surgical recovery, and overall peace of mind. Our team of doctors and surgeons has specifically designed a portfolio of nutritional products specifically targeted to aid certain surgical procedures.
Principals:
William Ogden, MD
Dominic Sinibaldi ’06
Darden Students:
Drew Pinkin '06
Board of Advisors:
Steve Burns
Cindy Collier*
Deb McMahon
Steven Keeler
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