10-16-2024 4:47am

TU's StarTUp Accelerator:

‘Unlike Anything Anywhere In The World’: Inside Towson’s Open-To-All StarTUp Accelerator

By Marc Ethier, poetsandquants.com

The Towson University StarTUp, a business accelerator, during the 2024 StarTUp Accelerator Showcase, celebrating the success of participating businesses. Towson photo

Towson University’s business school has no full-time MBA program. For aspiring entrepreneurs, what the university does offer is probably more practically — and certainly more immediately — useful.

Just off campus in the suburbs north of Baltimore, Towson’s StarTUp Accelerator is a co-working hub based in a 26,000-square-foot former National Guard building that has been retrofitted to include more than 6,000 square feet of co-working space, including six conference rooms, plus a second floor of office space. The Armory is big, it is brightly lit — and it has a Starbucks, too.

What really sets Towson’s StarTUp apart: The co-working space is free to use and open to all, not just Towson students. “I have toured dozens of other accelerators and can attest there is absolutely nothing like what we do,” says Patrick McQuown, executive director of entrepreneurship and founder of The StarTUp, which launched in September 2021. “No fee, no membership, and no affiliation to TU needed. We have VPs from healthcare companies to solo business owners and everything between that use it daily. It’s open five days a week, 8:30 to 5:30. And it’s awesome.”

$10 IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR EVERY $1 SPENT

The StarTUp’s seven state-of-the-art conference rooms host more than 500 organizations annually, from local nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. On the Armory’s second floor FINISH READING HERE