JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

Entrepreneur magazine’s August 2010 edition featured a story “50 really cool cities to start your business,” or as they further detailed, “the 50 cities and 10 lifestyles energizing businesses of all shapes and size.” These types of lists are always fun to read for the selections that are surprising, or redemptive, or just plain right. I never thought of Jackson, Wyo. as a great place for entrepreneurship (it’s under the “great outdoors” category). Great to see Pittsburgh was the leader on the list of “recovery and rebirth;” the collective leaders there deserve it. And while San Diego was on the “living in paradise” list (it really is paradise there, for entrepreneurs and residents alike), I was surprised to see Albuquerque.

But as I skimmed the list, I realized it quickly: not a single community in Ohio was on the list. Clearly, I have my media relations work cut out for me. But just to make sure that the Entrepreneur folks don’t have to work too hard to learn about the assets of Ohio — or Northeast Ohio in particular — I thought I’d go ahead and list my contributions here. (And please be sure to let me know what I’ve missed)!

• The great outdoors: “…where peaks and valleys are more than just points on the graph”
  Northeast Ohio actually does have peaks (such as in Summit County) and valleys (such as the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, ranked as the eighth most visited national park in the country alongside parks like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon), but it may be less well-known that Northeast Ohio is actually an outdoorsman’s dream, with lakes and rivers (as well as one of the Greats - Erie) for fishing, thousands of acres of parks nicknamed the Emerald Necklace, and hundreds of thousands of acres for hunting. Lorain and its larger western neighbor, Sandusky, not only offer several of the best trout fishing clubs but also has the GLIDE incubator and the Lorain County Community College Innovation Fund, a pre-seed fund investing $25,000 and $100,000 grants in promising entrepreneurial companies from across Northeast Ohio.
• City life: “higher costs, higher stakes but even higher visibility”
  There are not really any places in Northeast Ohio where “higher costs” is a reality; cost of living in this region indexes 93 relative to the national average. But obviously, the biggest city here with the biggest visibility is Cleveland itself, and almost 50% of JumpStart Ventures’ 48 portfolio companies are located in the city of Cleveland. When you consider all the ecosystem elements in Cleveland — from CWRU to Founders’ Café and Gorilla Group, from JumpStart and MAGNET to Cuyahoga County’s Opportunities Technology Fund — Cleveland should make the list.
• Recovery and rebirth: “cities on the mend, where even the smallest business can make a big difference”
  I’m always very impressed with Akron. With its own incubator (the Akron Global Business Accelerator), an investment fund for Israeli companies looking to expand in Akron, and the reinvention of the downtown area (including the minor league Akron Aeros, new restaurants, and early-stage companies such as ECHOGEN Power Systems), Akron has really transformed itself from the former “Rubber Capital of the World” to the new “polymer capital of the world” (so to speak).
• Living in paradise: “why wait until retirement to enjoy a life of sun, surf, and sand?”
  Aside from golf courses, there’s still plenty of sand and sun (at least in the summer months) up on Lake Erie, with some of the most beautiful beaches in some of the eastern suburbs of the city. Also on the eastern side of Cleveland are the communities that get the most snow in the winter (in case that’s your version of paradise). The eastern suburbs of Cleveland - including Mentor, Mayfield, and Willoughby, — are home to some of the fastest growing biotech companies in the area, such as STERIS, QED, and Neuros Medical. The area’s proximity to Cleveland Clinic and other healthcare cluster participants, along with very pleasant places to live, make it worth noticing.
• Creative centers: “…where creativity and capitalism make sweet music together”
  Oberlin is one of the most creative places in the country, with its brilliant, quirky counter-culturalism embraced by both its students and its residents. Oberlin College’s unique entrepreneurship programs (which include funding for student-run businesses) have not only created a few student-run startups, but attracted other companies — such as Greenfield Solar — to savor the culture. And don’t forget the Oberlin Conservatory, which really is generating sweet music.
• Family-friendly: “…where company and family can both grow up right”
  Everywhere in Ohio is family-friendly, but nowhere more so than Northeast Ohio. One of my favorite thriving entrepreneurial centers for families is Chagrin Falls, nestled in the rolling hills 30 miles southeast of Cleveland. Good public schools, a charming town center complete with natural waterfall, and a burgeoning entrepreneurial community including standouts such as CerviLenz make this one worth the list.
• Off the grid: “…where entrepreneurs have the latitude to forge their own paths”
  Youngstown offers one of the best examples of this I’ve noticed for years. With its location halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the YBI, and focus on B-to-B software development, Youngstown State and its student community, and the revitalization of various parts of the city, it’s an area ripe for entrepreneurs desiring to make their own way.
• Green scenes: “where capitalism meets eco-consciousness”
  Wooster, in the heart of Wayne County 45 miles west of Akron, is the home of ABSMaterials, one of the companies providing solutions to BP to clean up after the gulf oil crisis. The technology came right out of the College of Wooster’s chemistry lab, which isn’t a surprise given the initiatives run by the Center for Entrepreneurship at the college — whether they include brainstorms on Thursdays (complete with popcorn) or entrepreneurship programs for the area’s incarcerated.
• College towns: “start a business, and learn a thing or two”
  As if Wooster and Oberlin weren’t enough, there are a host of other college towns in the area all fostering entrepreneurship individually and together — from Berea (Baldwin Wallace College) to Hiram (Hiram College), from Ashland (Ashland University) to Painesville (Lake Erie College), and many others. But one of the best examples is Kent, which balances a quaint college town feel with the resources and heft of the state’s third largest university, Kent State. The University’s Center for Entrepreneurship has led to office hours for entrepreneurs and the start of the region’s own incubator, in addition to local entrepreneurial superstar Kent Displays.
• Small towns, big opportunities: “small ponds where your business can be a big fish”
  Have you been to Canton? Besides the Football Hall of Fame, this small city has a historical legacy of entrepreneurship. The three largest private employers there of the last 100 years — Timken, Diebold, and Hoover — were all started by entrepreneurs who found a community more than excited to embrace their ideas. The city’s leaders are energizing entrepreneurship again, and entrepreneurs interested to start high-growth businesses will find themselves more than embraced.

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.

Early-stage entrepreneurs need to pull inspiration from all kinds of places; how about the movies? Here’s a list of movies that are perfect for just the right time or right situation you might face with your high growth startup. 

Instead of a coffee…: Having trouble getting charged up for that very important first customer meeting, or need to inspire the team when you’ve had a tough week? War movies show the purest form of competition and Gladiator has the best opening of any. “Unleash(ing) hell” on the competition is a good thing! (Honorable Mention:  Jerry Maguire. How often do you think “help me, help you”?)

Feeling down? Whatever unexpected challenges the market has thrown at you this week, you are still in better shape than the guys in Apollo 13. Watch it for the inspiring examples of the principles you face every day:  1) the best laid plans don’t always work, so be ready to adapt quickly, 2) it’s amazing what you can do with just a few resources, and3) there’s a lot to learn, even positive outcomes, from “failure”. (Honorable mention:  Rudy, for the principle that “hard word really matters”.)

Reminder: Execution is everything. The 2000 movie Memento starring Guy Pearce was a mind-blower. The story is interesting, but it’s the delivery (read: execution) that brings the movie to life. Any other execution and the movie still would have been very entertaining, but the way it was told revolutionized the experience, brought a totally new kind of innovation to storytelling, and changed the way I think about movies to this day. (Honorable mentions for similar executional surprises:  Pulp Fiction and Crash.)

Worth more than I paid. We all want to get the pricing that will allow us to generate healthy profits, but to do so you need to deliver value beyond what you’d expect for the money. Avatar (the 3D version) wins. I paid $38 for my entire family to see this and wow, 3 hours of pure entertainment later, I would have paid double. (Honorable mention:  The recent Percy Jackson and the Olympians movie, for being infinitely better than most kids’ movies. Last summer’s The Hangover was worth gold.)

It’s very cool to be an entrepreneur. There are so many movies that can summarize why entrepreneurship is worth the trip, but my absolute favorite is Risky Business. It’s the ending I especially love. The students who are members of Young Enterprises Club present the summaries, and outcomes, of their businesses. Most of the students sell somewhat familiar things (like new paper towel holders) and earn a profit, albeit small. Joel deals in a riskier world, and he grosses a lot more money than his fellow students. Risky business he was in, and he wasn’t sure how it would work out, but he took the gamble and got the big payoff. Products aside (obviously, as our clients’ products are legal), JumpStart clients are in this same world — risky, scary businesses that could lead to big payoff, but only after taking big risk. Brilliantly fun. (Honorable mention:  None - It’s in a category all its own)

What movies would you add to the list?

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.

When JumpStart was started, the leaders looked across the country for models to emulate, and Innovation Works in Pittsburgh was one of them. Innovation Works (IW) is five years older than JumpStart but served as the model for many of our operational choices. While we have some important differences (including funding sources and the specifics of our local geographies), we also have many of the same elements: business community, deal flow from multiple partners including universities and service providers, inspired and supported entrepreneurs, and a model which ties various amounts of funding with business assistance.

IW had its annual meeting last Thursday and John Dearborn and I were in attendance. WOW. If you ever needed proof that the model we are both pursuing can work to create incredible economic transformation, a thriving entrepreneurial economy, positive internal brand image, and jobs, take a look at Pittsburgh and the work of IW. As just one example alone, the annual meeting was at McKesson Automation. The company that was the predecessor to McKesson was brought to IW by its three founding entrepreneurs. With the initial funding and business assistance from IW, the company grew from three to 800 employees in the Pittsburgh area. It was sold to McKesson and continues to employ over 500 hundred people in the Pittsburgh area and thousands of people across the U.S., while those three entrepreneurs have gone on to start other companies that have created hundreds of jobs (or lead IW, in the case of Rich Lunak). And that’s just one example.

To learn more about the results that IW has achieved in Pittsburgh, and to be inspired by what can happen in our region too, take a look at their 10 year anniversary annual report.

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.

Last week I attended an event that certainly would make anyone marvel at the entrepreneurial spirit, enthusiasm, and activity happening in Northeast Ohio. Goldstein Caldwell & Associates and TiE Ohio jointly sponsored the Portfolio Showcase at GCA’s new offices on Carnegie Ave, between the Cleveland Clinic and Case. GCA is a seed capital investment and business Development Company focused on very early (pre-seed) stage companies. TiE is the Ohio chapter of the global TiE network, a group that fosters entrepreneurship by focusing on immigrant, international, and minority entrepreneurs.

I went to the event expecting 30-40 investors, entrepreneurs and other interested parties who would network and hear presentations from a few promising local entrepreneurs. Instead, there were well over 200 people, somehow fit into this former flower shop. The event was outstanding! The networking was great, with a wide variety of people to interact with. The presentations were punchy, interesting, and ran on-time. The food and drink was excellent (until it ran out with the huge attendance). All in all, the TiE/GCA Portfolio Showcase was a huge success and a great testament to the vitality of Northeast Ohio’s growing entrepreneurial climate and the enthusiasm for high growth entrepreneurship here.    

The location of the event was interesting as well. GCA has converted a flower shop that is scheduled to be demolished into a really edgy “incubator-type” space, with some entrepreneurs getting to locate in the former flower cooler (I am not sure if that is considered to be prime space, or where the newbies get stuck!). You may have noticed that I said “IS scheduled to be demolished”. Todd Goldstein of GCA told me that, although the price was right (free!), the tradeoff is that the demolition will go forward sometime at the end of the year, and that GCA will be again looking for space to continue their work. If anyone knows of another space that might work for them, or if you are an early-stage company in need of startup space, please get a hold of Todd.

Here at JumpStart, we work hard at, and are very active in contributing to building an entrepreneurial climate and ecosystem here in Northeast Ohio, and we have lots of events to promote that. We don’t, however, need to be in the center of all such events, and it was really nice to see the TiE/GCA event go so well, and put the enthusiasm this region has for entrepreneurship on display. Congratulations and thanks to TiE and Goldstein Caldwell on a great job!

Chris Mather is President, JumpStart Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. Previously, he managed a number of technology initiatives in Northeast Ohio for NorTech. Before entering the economic development world, Chris ran a number of technology companies in Northeast Ohio and New England, including Ion Optics Inc., where he raised $6.7 million in venture capital, and Apsco Inc. and Gould Instrument Systems. Prior to that, he spent 13 years in sales, marketing and management roles with Hewlett Packard after graduating from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a BS in Electrical Engineering.