Hands-on Coaching
Hands-on Coaching
Incubator member companies are assigned professional coaches that meet with them weekly. Coaches mentor, advise, and suggest methods and procedures that help members overcome difficulties and move them forward to commercializing their concept. The high success rate of our members relies on this direct one-to-one coaching process.
Meet our coaches:
Johan Klarin
Johan Klarin comes to Venture Creations from Columbia University, where he served as manager of the NYSERDA-funded Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, assisting clean-tech startups in New York state. Previously, he was managing director of Viaduct Inc., a consulting company focused on Western New York startups, out of Buffalo, N.Y. Johan has an extensive background in creating and advising business startups.
Johan is also co-founder of several companies including AmeriCan Syndicate, a cross-border consulting company that advises Canadian startups that create prototypes and scale-up sales in the United States; Architect Marketing Platform; and online intermediary Arriving Here LLC.
Katherine O'Brien
Katherine has been coaching startup and small manufacturing businesses for the past five years as owner of ROC City Consultants. Her clients have included startups in clean energy, novel materials for technology advancement and consumer product innovations and services. She has worked with small manufacturing companies in the areas of tool and die, batteries and development of new manufacturing test equipment. Prior to running her own consulting company, Katherine had the opportunity to work at Xerox. She has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from University of Rochester and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Williams College.
Brad VanAuken
Brad VanAuken is one of the newest members of the Venture Creations Incubator team. Prior to this, he founded and ran a brand strategy consulting company, through which he advised over 200 companies, including many start-ups, throughout the world. Prior to that, he headed up marketing for Element K (now Skillsoft) and brand management and marketing for Hallmark. Earlier in his career, he was a new business strategist and product development manager in Hallmark’s Product Discovery & Development division. He started his career as a consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in New York City. He has a BS degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School.