What They’re Thinking: Eric Engelmann, executive director of NewBoCo

CEDAR RAPIDS — Eric Engelmann, founder and executive director of the New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative — known as NewBoCo — has become an advocate for entrepreneurialism throughout the Corridor.

Engelmann is one of the driving forces behind the Vault Coworking & Collaboration Space, one of about 17 co-working spaces in Iowa that acts as an incubator for entrepreneurs and startup businesses.

Last month, NewBoCo, which houses the Vault, opened three new features to further help businesses succeed.

These include a prototyping lab and virtual reality lab for members of the co-working space to build products and expand their services, as well as the DeltaV Coding School, a program aimed to train software developers for businesses.

Q: When did the Vault Coworking & Collaboration Space start?

A: 'The Vault actually existed before I was really involved. I want to say it was about 2012. It opened in the Guaranty Bank building, but it was created there by Andy Stoll and Amanda West. Their idea was just to create a clubhouse for entrepreneurs, there was no place for people to meet to talk about being an entrepreneur and they wanted to create one. There had been ones popping up in other cities and they felt like it was a good thing to do in Cedar Rapids. Then I got involved in 2013.'

Q: How do you explain the idea behind Vault to those who have never heard about it before?

A: 'At a minimum, it's basic roots. It's a physical place for entrepreneurs to get their businesses started. So it's partly physical office space with coffee and conference rooms and copiers, but that's really not the big idea. The big idea is that there's a community of people in there that can help you build your business. That's where I think the real magic is, because you can go work in a coffee shop and probably find cheap office space in any number of basements and buildings around town. The thing that's cool about Vault is that you walk in and there's bookkeepers and videographers and search engine optimization experts and web developers and venture capitalists and lawyers and they're all there, you know them all. You have this instant network of people, all kind of at the same stage of building your business. You don't have to go hunt all that stuff down. We've seen it really accelerate the growth of small business when you can just build that instant network and get your business going.'

Q: Do you think you're setting a trend in Cedar Rapids to become a leader in business incubators?

A: 'I think what makes ours unique is that it's all plugged in together. We have some really great co-working spaces that are really well run all over the state. If you took Vault on its own and put it up against other co-working spaces, they'd be very similar, there's some strengths and weaknesses in each model. What makes this one special is that it's automatically by default plugged into all the other stuff going on and you get these collaborations and relationships. ... We help them build their businesses in some ways through those cross pollinations. That's unique to the Cedar Rapids model, there's no one else that has the parts we've got.'

Q: What's the next evolution of this concept?

A: 'Right now, we're pretty focused on the technology part of things. Right now, most of the members of the co-working space are business and marketing for the most part. There are some technologists in there, too, but we really want to build this sort of breeding ground for technical talent as well. So between the code school, the prototyping lab, the virtual reality lab, all those together, we really want that to bring in technical talent. We're really trying to make it a part of the DNA so it's not just building stuff to build it, we want to make things here the ultimately become businesses someday. So we kind of wired the business and the technology together, and that's kind of what we're focused on figuring out the next year, too.'

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