An incubator is a new type of educational institution. It teaches hands-on “entrepreneurial development” to the business owner in a very precise manner because the instructional method is not generalized. It teaches only what the business owner doesn’t know or can’t do. Since each business owner and each business is different, the methodology is designed to teach you what you need to know in the best way that you can learn.Startup Incubators have been the backbone of a lot of early stage startups.Funds sometimes range from $25,000 to $500,000 if you are lucky.Incubators provide not just the funds, but the entrepreneurs are provided with guidance/coaching, exposure to other vcs and investors, chance to present to potential customers.Once a startup begins to take off when all the funds have been used up on the runway,some of them approach venture capitalists with startup that have customers and a working product. The top 10 of such incubators I know are these:

1) YCombinator ;
Some of the companies YCombinator has helped in the past are:
AppJet, Heroku,Omnisio,WattVision,Loopt,Disqus, Reditt, Weebly, Justin.tv,scribd,thesixtyone, foodoro,dropbox, posterous.
2) BetaWorks : Average Investment : $100K
3) ATDC -Georgia
4) Slingshoit Labs-Myspace
5) Capital Factory
6) Tech Stars
7) Shotput Ventures
8) Start At Spark
9) LaunchBoxDigital
10) Dream IT Ventures
11) Green Ventures
12) Javelin Venture Partners

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