A laboratory is an impressive thing to offer a young company. It has equipment, working space and the gratifying suggestion that someone has thought ahead. It does, however, make a poor sandwich. William D. Provine encountered a version of this problem while building The Innovation Space in Wilmington, Delaware. The nonprofit had planned to invest in startups through space and services. By early 2020, its leaders had added cash to the proposition. Founders needed to buy materials and sustain themselves. A useful address could only get them so far.
“Entrepreneurs still need to eat”
Bill Provine · 2020
The change suggests a practical approach to company building. An offer becomes more useful when it reflects what its recipients actually need. The early First Fund package reached $150,000, split evenly between cash and services. For someone whose career had moved through research, manufacturing and business development, the lesson had a familiar shape. An arrangement can be technically sound and still need improvement when it meets a customer.
Before the founder, the reaction kinetics
Provine, known professionally as Bill, came to this work through chemical engineering. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 and his doctorate at the University of Delaware in 1992. His academic and professional record places the two universities at either end of a move that would tie his working life to Delaware. In 1992, he joined DuPont’s Central Research and Development division, applying his training to reaction kinetics and catalysis, materials and chemical processes.
The career then widened. Manufacturing exposed him to a different set of demands from those of research. Business development and venture formation brought him closer to the commercial decisions that determine whether a technical idea travels. Later responsibilities included DuPont’s international innovation centers and regional laboratories. His work put universities, companies and customers in the same field of view. The interesting question became how to arrange their relationships so that each participant had a reason to stay involved.
In his account of those years, Provine described learning how innovation worked in different markets around the world, including the contractual arrangements behind partnerships. That detail is revealing. Collaboration may sound agreeable at a conference; somebody still has to work out the terms. His eventual startup would draw on that experience of getting institutions to work together. The chemical engineer was learning to handle a second sort of reaction, the one between organizations.
A corporate backyard opens its gate
The opening came during a period of change. DuPont was moving through its merger with Dow, while the University of Delaware was welcoming Dennis Assanis as president. Provine recalled conversations with Assanis while the incoming president was still making the transition from Stony Brook. The university wanted more entrepreneurship around its research. DuPont was considering new ways to engage entrepreneurs. Delaware’s political leadership joined the discussion. Several institutions, with different responsibilities, had found a project they could share.
The partnership announced in April 2017 made those intentions concrete. Delaware committed $5 million over three years. The university committed $1.5 million over the same period. DuPont contributed $1.25 million in startup funding, a building valued at $15 million and laboratory equipment valued at $2 million. The initial plan covered 100,000 square feet at the Experimental Station. Those contributions gave Provine something more substantial than a launch-day promise: facilities and funding with which to begin.
He was careful about claiming authorship. Asked how the incubator came together, he credited a team effort. That is a useful corrective to the conventional founder portrait, in which everybody else tends to disappear just before the photograph. Provine’s undertaking depended on the resources of the partners. His work was to help turn that agreement into an organization that young companies could actually use.
The building needed smaller ambitions
A building designed for a large employer does not automatically suit a company of two people. In 2018, Provine described the need to create smaller private spaces within a facility shaped around a single corporate occupant. A young team needed a limited footprint and a manageable cost while it worked toward proof of concept. Too much space, however handsome, could consume money the company needed for its next experiment.
The planned conversion paired a $3 million Economic Development Administration grant with $3 million from other partners. When the renovated facilities opened in September 2019, the work had produced private laboratory pods and collaboration areas. Provine spoke of adapting a building originally constructed for the DuPont Merck joint venture to serve multiple startups. Architecture had become part of the business model. A wall in the right place could matter as much as an introduction in the right room.
At the 2019 opening, he set out a longer ambition: companies that could endure for generations and become substantial local employers. That helps explain his attachment to the place. The aim extended beyond filling rooms. He wanted companies to grow into businesses with a lasting role in the community, including businesses that would eventually need premises beyond the incubator.
The microscope someone else bought
For a materials founder, useful support can be a very particular piece of equipment. Christopher DiMarco, founder of Sindri Materials, spent nine months looking for a place for his company before choosing The Innovation Space. He singled out access to a scanning electron microscope, describing an instrument costing a quarter of a million dollars that his business would consequently not have to buy. The value was specific to the research he needed to do.
Provine’s explanation of the equipment problem was equally practical. Expensive instruments tend to sit inside universities and established companies, beyond the budgets of many entrepreneurs. The incubator could supply access, including through loaned equipment. DiMarco also described people sharing information about grants, hiring and overlapping technical interests. For Provine, the facility’s continuing improvement meant spending on laboratories, instruments and conference rooms. An incubator needs maintenance as well as ideas.
His early description of startup support also included help finding government grants, structuring industrial partnerships and preparing for investor introductions. The sequence mattered: different stages called for different kinds of money. A useful contact was only part of the job. A founder also needed a pitch that made sense to the person receiving it. Provine’s corporate relationships became something he could put to work on behalf of much smaller businesses.
A nonprofit with bills of its own
Provine has applied the same practical thinking to his own organization. In his 2018 discussion of running the incubator, he emphasized that a nonprofit still needed an effective business model and the ability to reinvest. Tenants paid for access. The mission did not remove the operating expenses. It gave the organization a reason to keep improving what those payments supported.
Today, First Fund’s published offer provides up to $240,000 in combined support through a convertible loan. Cash ranges from $30,000 to $120,000, with laboratory space, offices and services adding to the package. Participating companies must establish residency at The Innovation Space. The arrangement ties investment to the practical use of the facilities. It also preserves the distinction Provine’s earlier adjustment made clear: access and cash solve different problems.
The scale has changed considerably since launch. The organization’s current impact page reports more than 156 startups supported and more than $1.24 billion raised by those companies collectively since 2017. For 2025, it records 39 startups supported, more than $40 million raised and 100 new jobs created. Those are company outcomes across a portfolio, with many people responsible for them. They give a sense of the activity around the platform Provine helped establish.
Annual figures for supported companies. Capital was raised by the startups.
Curiosity, with an operating budget
Ask Provine what he enjoys about the job and the engineer returns to the foreground. He has described the pleasure of encountering different technologies and new ideas, including ideas that initially sound wacky. In his 2018 interview, the appeal lay in the variety and the chance to help an idea become useful. Curiosity gives him a reason to listen. Running an organization gives that listening a place to lead.
His professional service has carried that interest beyond Wilmington. He has served on the boards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Resolution Project, and on the federal National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship for 2022-24. Junior Achievement of Delaware named him a 2022 Business Leaders Hall of Fame laureate. These connections place his daily work alongside broader questions about scientific opportunity, entrepreneurship and the economy.
In 2026, he put himself forward as an American Chemical Society director-at-large candidate for the 2027-29 term. His statement emphasized member value, connections across institutions and public trust in science. In September, his essay “Trust Powers The Innovation Flywheel” pursued a related argument: scientific progress depends on confidence that encourages investment, useful applications and communication that helps renew that confidence. He is asking what keeps the whole process going after the first discovery.
The question suits the career. Provine began by studying processes inside chemical systems, then spent years arranging relationships around them. In Delaware, that work has taken the form of smaller laboratories, shared instruments, funding packages and an organization expected to pay its way. None of those objects produces a discovery on command. Each can give a founder room to attempt the next piece of work. His most memorable observation remains the one about eating. Even a promising experiment must share the day with ordinary expenses. A founder who remembers that has a useful starting point for helping other founders.