StartupCity Des Moines is now waiting on just one more step to become a fully operational start-up business incubator.

The company received a $250,000 loan from the Iowa Department of Economic Development last week, which raised the total amount of funding for the venture to $550,000. StartupCity has also received commitments from the city of Des Moines, the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the Corporation for Economic Development.

Now, the last piece of the puzzle is to obtain a targeted $150,000 commitment from Polk County.

“We need a yes or no nod from the county, which will in large part decide when and if we’ll do this,” said Christian Renaud, one of two StartupCity principals. “If the county doesn’t come in, that puts quite a crimp in this, because we’ll need to go back to the other funders and see if we can make up that share.”

StartupCity is designed to be a business incubator specially catering to technology-related companies. The goal, if the company can complete funding to open a space to house the incubator, will be to help start-ups at every stage of development through a team of mentors and the created synergy of working in the same space as a number of other similar start-ups.

Renaud hopes that the incubator will house 10 to 15 start-ups in the first year of business, 20 in the second year and 30 by year three.

For now, though, Renaud and co-principal Tej Dhawan, along with other mentors, have been working with area start-ups on an advisory level.

“That level of engagement versus the level of engagement that we’ll get by (working in the same space), it’s sort of like we’ll go from weekly dates to we are actually living with each other 24/7. Those are two different levels of commitment,” Renaud said.

Renaud wouldn’t place a timeline on when he expects the county to make a decision, but did say StartupCity has been pitching the idea to county officials.