The Gravity Center (@gravity_centre) in Plano, Texas is an early stage incubator funded by Alcatel-Lucent and supported by corporate innovation programs AT&T Foundry and ng Connect. The incubator's space north of Dallas provides entrepreneurs who live in Plano with an attractive local alternative to obtaining an office downtown (known as "Uptown" in Dallas).
AT&T Foundry building, where The Gravity Center used to reside in, and is now next door to.
Jennifer Conley (@jenniferconley), The Gravity Center Director, heads the incubator's effort to recruit and evaluate startups for the space. Jennifer has been connecting entrepreneurs and software developers in the Dallas for several years. She worked to bring the Joomla, Drupal, and .NET communities together for OpenCamp in 2010. Jennifer also started and runs the well-known I Live in Dallas blog.
The two most precious resources for startup companies are time and money. Time is always scarce. Spending hours stuck in Dallas traffic every day driving to and from the office is a "luxury" that founders cannot afford. For founders who already live in Plano they can eliminate wasted hours traveling to and from downtown Dallas by working in Plano.
The Gravity Center also provides indirect help on the monetary side by providing free office space and resources to accepted startups. AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent also evaluate startups in the space for investment or funding through contracts to build products.