A group of University student entrepreneurs has created an innovative business incubator in downtown Ann Arbor to foster ideas, share advice and consolidate resources with other enterprising students.

The incubator, called TechArb, is composed of thirty students running 10 small start-up businesses and will occupy the basement of Tally Hall, a vacant building on Liberty Street, until August.

TechArb, aims to pool resources and create a centralized community for student entrepreneurs, according to co-founder and College of Engineering senior Jason Bornhorst.

Bornhorst is also co-founder and group manager of Maize Ventures, a networking group for student-run businesses. He pursued the space for TechArb with other student entrepreneurs after his previous business, CampusRoost, Inc. — an online social network built around student housing — became difficult to operate once normal classes resumed in the fall of 2008.

TechArb was created when Ann Arbor venture capital firm RPM Ventures and Ann Arbor real estate company McKinley, Inc. allowed Bornhorst and a few students from RPM’s 10-week summer entrepreneurial internship program to use the space.

Brett Wejrowski, College of Engineering senior and co-founder of Maize Ventures, was participating in RPM’s internship when he joined the incubator.

“I was going to school and trying to run a small web development business at the same time, and trying to find like-minded people,” he said.

Wejrowski and others pitched in to build permanent furniture and set up a network to prepare the space for use.

“In one week’s time, we went from a grassroots thing to people actually working and running companies down here (in the basement),” Bornhorst said. “The really cool part is that there was no one developer — just a bunch of people and ideas — and it developed.”

Several of the businesses have had success and exposure since joining the incubator. Mobil33t, an iPhone application developer, recently released DoGood — an application that encourages people to do random acts of kindness. Since its release on June 8, the application has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

Other businesses include MyBandStock.com, a venture that allows music fans to invest directly in their favorite artists, and Shepherd Intelligent Systems, a public transportation tracking website conceived and developed under the name Magic Bus.

Carrier Mobile, Phonagle LLC, Troubadour Mobile and Quazie.net are also start-up businesses that specialize in mobile phone applications.

Bornhorst and Wejrowski said that the incubator is a temporary endeavor, as the space’s free lease will expire in August 2009. They hope to find University and community support in the fall, either in the form of space, money or other resources.

“The big unknown is how to portray its value to the community and to the University — how to sell it and translate how its helped us into actual numbers,” Bornhorst said, adding that losing the space and shared resources in the fall would be disastrous for some of the small businesses that are a part of TechArb.

Bornhorst said that allocating a budget for the incubator, tallying hours spent in the basement and creating a list of the business’s accomplishments since joining the incubator would be required for University support, among other things.

“I firmly believe that this kind of thing is exactly what the community needs,” Bornhorst said. “We’ve done a good job of making entrepreneurship cool, but we need to do a better job of snapping (small businesses) up once they start and giving them the space and resources they need.”