JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

Time is running out my friends. You only have a few days left to register for one of the most exciting and worthwhile events to hit our region in quite some time. Transforming The Landscape of Business In America: A Minority Business Early-Stage Capital Summit will truly be a game changing experience for those that make the investment. As I recognize that times are hectic right now with the holidays upon us and a host of year-end activities pulling us in many directions, I thought I would provide a little food for thought as you consider whether attending this event is truly worth your time. So without further ado, here are my top 12 reasons why you should be at The Intercontinental Hotel on December 3rd:

1. To better understand how growing diverse and inner city businesses positively impacts ALL citizens in the region
2. To hear new and positive messages and strategies relative to growth, hope and prosperity for our community
3. To learn new and innovative approaches to growing more vibrant job creating companies in the midst of rapidly changing technologies
4. To best position your business or business idea for investment consideration as you kick off 2010
5. To learn and adopt new strategies for creating wealth as an investor and/or business owner
6. To better understand the emerging markets and industries if you are even considering entrepreneurship
7. To better understand the challenges and pitfalls of growing a successful company and how to address these concerns
8. To clearly understand precisely what investors are looking for when they choose to invest in a business venture
9. To understand the unique and critical differences between what a bank looks for versus what an investor looks for
10. To better understand how to position your business for alternative forms of capital when traditional credit is so difficult to come by
11. To see live investor presentations from diverse entrepreneurs that are currently raising capital for their high growth businesses
12. To network and build relationships with some of the nation’s foremost thought leaders in creating wealth in challenging environments

I could certainly add to this list, but I imagine you get the idea. We can only guarantee seating at the event if you register in advance by no later than the close of business on Monday, November 30th. Don’t miss out on this rare and groundbreaking opportunity designed to give you the specific information you need to chart your path to success in the coming year.

Hope to see you there!

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.

During this week, Americans are considering those things for which they are thankful, and I am no exception. But while this is often a reflective, quiet exercise, I have the opposite reaction when I consider JumpStart progress; I find it incredibly energizing and exciting. Did you know…

• Last week marked the sixth anniversary of our community’s leaders determining JumpStart was necessary and taking the first organizing actions. Without their vision and maybe more importantly, their commitment to action, there would be thousands of entrepreneurs whose ideas might not have been as successful, or who might be living somewhere else.
• JumpStart was a proud sponsor of this past weekend’s “Cleveland Startup Weekend“, a 54-hour event to bring together people who want to start a high tech business. There have been Startup Weekends around the world (including Boston, Paris and Israel) but ours rocketed to the top. Northeast Ohio’s session sold out, even with more tickets added, and had the highest number of sponsors of any city in the world. As Clint Nelsen, the Seattle Partner of Startup Weekend said, “The event in Cleveland embodied everything we stand for! We were literally writing code on a boat next to a WWII submarine, two blocks from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, building new ideas and launching new startups.” Who knew, six years ago, we’d be setting the bar for the world in entrepreneurial energy.
• JumpStart Ventures companies continue to hit key milestones. In less than four weeks, three JumpStart Ventures portfolio companies - BSKLive, Neuros Medical, and MAR Systems - raised nearly $5 million in follow-on funding collectively. This is in addition to the global recognition two companies received in BusinessWeek. Once again, the region’s companies are competing and winning investment dollars and global recognition.
• This region has also been recognized as a national leader by The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, and The Marathon Club. Both these organizations decided to work with us — in our region — to host next week’s early-stage capital summit focused on increasing access to capital for minority and female business owners.

Enjoy your time this week with your family and friends, and take just a minute to relax. We deserve it.

Ray Leach is CEO of JumpStart and brings his energy and leadership experiences from founding five high growth entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial endeavors in the last 20 years. Ray is a Sloan Fellow and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also earned a BA in Finance from the University of Akron.

National Awards. Global Product Launches. Lifesaving Products. New Investments. Here’s a rundown of some progress in the JumpStart Ventures portfolio in just the past week or two:

• BusinessWeek named two JumpStart Ventures portfolio companies — Phycal and Freedom Meditech – to its inaugural list of the Top 25 Most Intriguing Startup Companies in the World. I really like that Phycal founder and CEO, Kevin Berner, is not only commercializing a technology (its lipid extraction process is projected to make algae an economical biofuel), but he also is building an enduring company. From day one, he has built into the company culture certain values based on his experiences and life beliefs, values such as discipline, charity, and intelligence.
• Microsoft featured PreEmptive Solutions in two separate keynotes on two continents (in Berlin and Las Vegas) as part of the launch of PreEmptive’s Runtime Intelligence Service (RIS), a cloud-based service that monitors application usage and user behavior. RIS has the distinction of being the only part of Visual Studio not written by Microsoft. Given this powerful, unique “in-the-box” position, I think RIS’s global product launch could take PreEmptive, which is already profitable and growing, to a whole new level as a leading company in the application lifecycle management industry.
• China suffered a mining tragedy over the weekend and in China alone, 3,000 miners have died this year in mining accidents. Our portfolio company, InSet Systems, has a technology that helps find miners within ten feet instead of within 500 or so feet (which is the approximate accuracy of existing technologies). Noting that it could save many lives in a very dangerous industry, Popular Science magazine, in 2008, named InSet’s inertial tracking and wireless communications technology “one of the Top 10 technologies” of the year. The InSet system will be ready for pilot installation in a working mine in a few weeks; the company has a software development partnership with the renowned Draper Labs as well as a distributor relationship in the Far East; and the company needs angel investment to get to the next steps. I hope the early-stage capital markets will support this company so that it can get this product to market and save lives.
• We made a new investment in Checkpoint Surgical which has developed a neuromuscular locator/stimulator. Checkpoint is a spin-out from NDI Medical, which was founded in 2002 by Geoff Thrope. NDI spun out its MEDSTIM bladder pacing system technology a few years ago and shortly thereafter the product line was acquired by Medtronic, which provided a nice “early exit” to the NDI team and others. The excellent Checkpoint team, led by CEO, Len Cosentino (former VP of Business Development at NDI), and Chairman, Geoff Thrope, is well positioned to do a repeat of  MEDSTIM: develop a differentiated product, build a good company, forge strong partnerships, and get acquired. Easy, right?

About as easy as sailing across the Atlantic on a cargo ship and arriving in unfamiliar territory at the start of winter. And on that note, I wish these entrepreneurs and all the metaphoric pilgrims of the North Coast technology scene (OK, I know that brand-wise I’m supposed to say “Northeast Ohio” not “North Coast”, but go with me here: my literary side is trying to get a coastal angle on this pilgrim thing) a happy Thanksgiving!

Becca Braun is President of JumpStart Ventures. She founded and led a number of early-stage companies and organizations, as well as worked as a private equity investor and management consultant. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA in Linguistics from Harvard University. She is keenly interested in the intersection of wealth creation and broad-based regional economic growth.

I know you were impressed about the progress being made in Ohio when you read my colleague John Dearborn’s blog just a few weeks ago. Maybe you were even a little surprised! After all, it’s not entirely intuitive (not yet, anyway) that Ohio’s venture capital activity would have grown at double the national average for the last five years, or that the state’s Ohio Third Frontier program would have already created more than 41,000 jobs.

After so much good news on our progress such a short time ago, it might be surprising that I have three more reasons Ohio should be on rooftops, shouting about its progress. I’m not surprised, because the velocity of Ohio’s growth is accelerating; it’s why we continue to have success after success to talk about. So — that said — here are three more reasons why you can brag about progress in Ohio:

• #1 in the country in deals supported by the government. ChubbyBrain’s new report on government funding was just published by FastCompany, and included a look at where the government funding going into company deals was allocated. Ohio was #1 based on number of deals, followed by California and Massachusetts. The fact that California and Boston were second and third on the list shows that the government isn’t funding companies where nobody else is funding them; on the contrary, government funding — like private sector funding — goes where the companies are most competitive and promising.
• BusinessWeek’s inaugural list of World’s 25 Most Intriguing New Companies included Phycal and Freedom Meditech, both of which have received JumpStart Ventures investment. Check out the current publication for the profile of Phycal, one of just five companies with a longer writeup. (You don’t want to miss learning about the CEO’s “romance with algae”!) These companies had to compete with global companies on both the originality of the idea and the progress that’s being made in order to make it on the list.
• My own experience at the NVCA meeting in Palo Alto, CA. When meeting with other communicators to be briefed on VC policy and communication issues, the head of marketing of a well-known venture capital firm said to me directly, “What is going on in Ohio? I can’t believe how (they’ve) seemingly come out of nowhere and now, (they) seem to be everywhere.” Given all the “braggin’ rights” we have, you can imagine how I answered that!

Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business 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.