JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

If you are an entrepreneur and are currently raising equity capital — check out the upcoming JumpStart Angel Fair. The fair will be held on Tuesday, October 26th from 11:30am to 4pm at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland. Over 100 angel investors are expected to attend, and all participants will be invited to attend JumpStart’s Annual Community Meeting taking place immediately following from 3:30pm to 6pm.

If you are interested, complete the online application form by 5pm on September 10th. A selection committee made up of investors and entrepreneurial support professionals from around the state will review the applications and select 12 companies to present. Companies will be notified the week of September 20th of their status.

As part of the day’s events, selected companies will take part in the Entrepreneur Showcase at JumpStart’s Annual Meeting to continue their conversations with investors, speak with other entrepreneurs, and share their company stories with other event attendees.

The last Angel Fair we hosted attracted over 100 angel investors and presenting companies went on to raise over $11 million in equity capital. We expect to have the same great turnout (if not better) at this year’s Fair and are excited about once again bringing our state’s most promising company opportunities and serious angel investors together in one room.

This is a great forum to showcase your company and pitch to an audience of qualified angel investors. Make sure to fill out your application today!

Kerri Breen is the Vice President of External Finance for JumpStart Ventures and works directly with our portfolio companies to secure additional growth capital. Kerri brings experience in capital markets, banking, public and private offerings of debt and equity securities, corporate mergers and acquisitions, and real estate asset dispositions. Kerri received her MBA with a focus on finance from the Weatherhead School of Management and her BA in marketing from Ohio State University.

It’s been exciting to see a groundswell of activity in Washington focused on encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation (such as the creation of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, of which Ray is a member). 

The most recent example that I noticed was legislation introduced that would provide a 25% tax credit for angel investors who invest in small or early-stage businesses that have received SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants. The investment, which would be limited to half the size of the SBIR grant, would require a holding period of at least three years. Even though a three year investment is typically within the exit expectations for any angel investor (on the early side, in many cases), it’s nice to see legislation structured that reflects an understanding of the need for long-term investment. I also like to see incentives in place to encourage private investment when federal dollars are already being invested.

Apparently this bill (called The Innovation Technologies Investment Incentive Act) was based on the best practice learning of a biotech tax credit available in Maryland which has helped small, young biotech companies raise $50 million in investment. I also noticed one of the legislators sponsoring the bill was new Congressman and successful entrepreneur Jared Polis, the founder of Proflowers.com and Bluemountain.com (both of which had multimillion dollar exits) and represent one of the country’s hottest new entrepreneurial hubs: Boulder, Colorado.  

Another piece of legislation based on best practices…the Business Incubation Promotion Act, introduced in September of 2009 with the intent of encouraging and funding the establishment of more business incubators. Now let’s get that out of committee!

Cathy Belk is the Chief Relationship Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business and relationship management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.

Content provided by Josh Gordon of Knotice, a JumpStart Ventures Portfolio Company, and The Lunch Pail, a blog by Knotice 

For Akron, Ohio, the transition from Rubber Capital to something else has been gradual. Once a thriving centerpiece of industry in the United States, many rubber companies have moved from the region, though Goodyear remains. The legacy of rubber is still all over the city. In fact, I am writing and posting this article in a refurbished B.F. Goodrich building. The Spaghetti Warehouse that now sits across the parking lot from the cluster of buildings that contain Knotice’s headquarters was once the world headquarters for the rubber giant when it first got its start in March of 1871.

As the rubber companies moved away from the region in the 1990s, Akron’s economy needed to transition to a more service based economy. The entrepreneurial, lunch pail mentality fortunately still thrives within the city, paving the way for a successful transition that is bearing more fruit now than ever before.

As successful economic development and job growth thrive within Akron, many benefit. Improvements have been made in the job market with successful and fast growing businesses beginning to populate once dormant buildings along Main Street, and residential real estate has also seen a positive impact. In fact, NBC’s Today Show recently highlighted Akron, Ohio as the second best residential real estate market in the country, taking into account job opportunity, housing costs, and house size for the investment.

“Not the old rubber capital,” remarked the real estate expert who made an appearance on the show. “Akron has research, financial, and high-tech businesses moving in. Jobs are easy to get in Akron.”

Good jobs plus cost-efficient real estate is the right mixture to keep talent in Akron and attract more.

Economist Joe Cortright, president of Impresa Economics, recently spoke in Akron about the many opportunities the city has within its grasp. Cortright is an expert in attracting quality talent to ambitious cities with opportunities. Cortright underscored the importance of connecting researchers and talented people with good ideas.

One forward-thinking and aggressive way to attract and maintain a strong talent pool in Akron is to provide a business environment talented people can thrive in both short and long-term. The city is taking many steps in the right direction on this front, with one of the larger steps coming in the form of the Connect Akron downtown Municipal WiFi project. The goal of the project is to blanket the Main Street corridor and surrounding areas in downtown Akron with free WiFi enabling professionals to work on the go and congregate to encourage new business growth and development. The network seamlessly links the university downtown, too, enabling students to access the school’s network throughout the city - not just on campus.

Community transitions can be slow at times, especially when transforming the economic foundation of a region. Akron was once a thriving hotspot in the Midwest, and is well on its way to becoming that again - and Knotice, recently named Akron’s fastest growing company, is happy to be playing a small part!

Knotice, a JumpStart Ventures Portfolio Company, is an on-demand software firm that, with their breakthrough software platform Concentri™, delivers direct digital marketing solutions designed to maximize ROI through process automation, increased relevance, and improved performance. Visit their blog, The Lunch Pail, for more thoughts from the team at Knotice.

Since joining JumpStart back in 2006 and being charged with identifying strategies to engage more of our region’s minority and women-led businesses, one of my primary objectives has been to encourage our community’s diverse entrepreneurs to increase their level of involvement in regional events and activities. There is terrific information being shared on a regular basis at these events, but unfortunately too few of our region’s diverse entrepreneurs are in attendance to receive this information. Far too often, mainstream events focused on raising angel and venture capital and growing larger scale firms fail to attract a diverse audience of attendees that is more representative of our region’s population. I have written a number of articles, blogs, and newsletters on this topic, but fundamentally nothing will change until our region’s diverse entrepreneurs decide to get engaged. Without question our event planners and community leaders need to make sure that these events are promoted and publicized through a diverse set of media channels and partners, but ultimately the decision rests with the individual to decide to attend or not.

JumpStart has taken some very exciting steps over the past few years in putting on diverse and collaborative events with such leading national organizations as The Marathon Club and The Initiative For A Competitive Inner City (ICIC), and I am thrilled to announce that we are partnering again to ensure that we build on this momentum. Rather than put on a separate event as we have done in the past, the president of the Marathon Club (and now also JumpStart board member), Carmen Ortiz-McGhee, and I are joining forces with the International Economic Development Council and the Ohio Early Stage Capital Summit for two exciting and timely events taking place next month in Columbus. Carmen and I will be leading and facilitating panel discussions at these events focusing on the specific issues that disproportionately impact high growth minority and women entrepreneurs, and it is essential that more of our community’s diverse entrepreneurs are in attendance to get connected. For more information on each conference, please visit the following pages: IEDC Conference Information, Ohio Early Stage Summit Information. I am both thrilled and honored to take part in these events this year, and truly hope to see all of you there.

I would also like to announce an exciting opportunity being put on by another of our national partners, ICIC, which is hosting its 7th annual Inner City Capital Connections Conference (ICCC) this coming November 15-16th in Los Angeles, California. The ICCC is a unique opportunity for inner city based businesses and entrepreneurs to gain direct access to investors and other funding sources that are specifically committed to growing larger scale businesses in the core urban centers of our country to help revitalize our nation’s inner city economies. Entrepreneurs interested in attending and presenting their business to investors at the event should log on to www.icic.org, or contact Hyacinth Vassell at hvassell@icic.org or via phone at 617.297.3120.

The time to get involved is now! Let’s get up, get going, and get engaged in these uniquely designed events that just might be the difference between success or failure in these rapidly and constantly changing economic times. 

Darrin is Chief Economic Inclusion Officer of JumpStart and President of JumpStart Inclusion Advisors. He founded and ran his own strategic planning and management assistance firm and spent 16 years in the commercial banking and finance industry. Darrin has an MBA from Baldwin-Wallace College and an undergraduate degree from Mount Union College. He has led a series of workshops and seminars on matters of economic development and diversity.