JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

I just vacationed on the north shore of Lake Erie and returned to work yesterday to find three reports in my email inbox that made for an upbeat morning, which I needed (read on, and you’ll learn why). 

First, Youngstown is on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine’s August issue as one of the Top 10 best cities for entrepreneurs. Jim Cossler, head of the Youngstown Business Incubator, and Turning Technologies (ranked as one of the fastest growing software companies in the country), are two key reasons for the ranking. Jim is the evangelist of all evangelists. We tried to recruit him here when JumpStart was first formed, but he loved his job too much to do anything else, and we had to respect that. He knows the strengths of the tech corridor that Youngstown, at the mid-point between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, represents, and he builds on those strengths with a focus and relentlessness that is fun to watch. Congrats to the Youngstown entrepreneurial and tech community on this win!

Second, Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor is listed as the 15th city in Forbes Magazine’s recent “America’s 100 Best Cheap Cities” list, which includes the subtitle “Get more for less in these bargain boomtowns”. What’s more, the magazine lists nine more Ohio cities, giving Ohio ten cities that are in the top 100. From what I can tell, no other state has more cities that qualify as “boomtowns where you can get more for less”. These cities are Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Dayton, Toledo, Youngstown, Canton, Mansfield, and Lima. Of course I recognize, as does the magazine itself, that cheap cities may very well be cheap because unemployment is high or some other structural/economic factor is sub-optimal. However, the magazine also says that it is seeing the technology industry shift towards these lower cost cities and that this is “all part of a larger shift with tech that you’re going to see in the U.S.” At JumpStart, we live our lives every day working towards this, so we live and breathe this emerging reality; it’s great to see others beginning to recognize it. 

Third, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ recent Clean Energy Economy report ranks Ohio in the top 5 states in the country for number of jobs in the Clean Energy Economy. The Clean Energy Economy is a huge part of forecasted job growth over the next five to ten years and longer, and so to be a Top 5 state bodes well. Combined with Northeast Ohio’s already recognized healthcare strengths, we may well be positioned for a good decade (maybe even a great one?). The report highlights Axentis, right here in Cleveland, as a company whose software monitors greenhouse gas emissions. One of our Venture Partners, Ted Frank, was co-founder and President of Axentis, and its Chairman (and co-founder), Steve Lindseth, is one of our favorite regular speakers on the topic of growing a company and raising capital. Congrats to them for being highlighted.

Now back to why I needed to have an upbeat morning…During vacation I was supposed to be reading about the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but instead I got engrossed in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Now I return to work this morning no better a leader and all scared-like and depressed to boot (have you read In Cold Blood?). I would like to take this opportunity to reframe my wayward vacation ways, however. You see, rather than just reading about leadership, I like to believe I was actually practicing it: while I was away not reading what I was supposed to be reading, Youngstown became tops, Cleveland became a boomtown, and Ohio became a Cleantech mecca! Now that’s some serious leaderly delegating, eh? :-) 

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.

At a recent Public Relations Society of America luncheon, several of our region’s leaders (including JumpStart’s Ray Leach) spoke about positive economic activity occurring in the Cleveland Plus region. At one point, the panel moderator reminded the audience of PR and marketing professionals that aside from the marketing we do as part of our jobs, we should be the leaders in telling our region’s success stories every day in all our interactions, personal and professional. Truer words…right?

One thing I realized was that there is no lack of interest in telling the good stories, but perhaps a lack of facts and information. So, here you go. You will now be armed with easy-to-remember facts about the vibrancy and progress of one element of our economic activity: the region’s entrepreneurial ventures.

• In 2008, more companies (73) received venture capital investment than in any of the past 4 years. This is significant because it is more likely that a company receiving venture investment (vs. one that does not) will continue growth, ultimately becoming a significant employer in the region.
• We have had nearly 90 venture capital firms from outside the region invest in a company here in the past five years. This indicates that the strength of our entrepreneurial community is competitive with investment opportunities across the nation.
• Our region’s entrepreneurs are successfully innovating across a variety of industries. Not only are many companies growing in the areas of bioscience, but we also have successful entrepreneurs building companies in sectors such as advanced materials and energy. (In fact, investors more than doubled the investment dollars in companies in these industries since last year.) Often, these companies are creating “clean technologies” or solutions which are not only good business, but good for the earth too. This is an area of significant national attention, and our region is in the mix.
• In 2008, some of these entrepreneurial ventures contributed to the more than 6,000 jobs created in the region.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so watch here for future updates on great stories. Bottom line, there is much entrepreneurial success happening here. We just need to talk about it.

The sources for this data are the 2008 Venture Capital Report for the Cleveland Plus region, and Cleveland Plus Business.

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.