JumpStart: IdeaExchange Blog

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.

Not quite a resolution (because I want to avoid the “breaking” curse), these are the most important things I’m going to prioritize this year, as they will directly impact my ability to deliver success for JumpStart. 

5) Monitor marketing news and trends every day. I use NetVibes to assist with monitoring blogs, Twitter, and news updates, in addition to my RSS feeds and email newsletters, but admit sometimes I’m catching up at the end of the week. The thing is, every time I check, I see one thing that is valuable right then. I hate the idea that I’m losing days in which those ideas can prompt and enhance my thinking. After reading David Carr’s Why Twitter Will Endure - NYTimes.com from the Times last Sunday, I’m wondering if I should focus some time on following the right folks on Twitter and leave it at that…

4) Reconnect with my network. I’ve spent time re-establishing professional connections through LinkedIn, but for a while now, the list has been sitting relatively fallow. (I would hypothesize this is somewhat common unless someone has sales responsibilities or is working to obtain or fill a position). But what a wealth of people with whom to brainstorm, tackle problems, and gain best-practice examples or new ideas! When was the last time I called someone to get caught up on responsibilities, most recent business challenges, and best new thing learned? Hard to believe this wouldn’t be richly worth the 10 minutes.

3) Create a mobile plan. Yes, this has been a long time coming, and many businesses are already  utilizing mobile tools to connect richly with consumers or customers. (In fact, Knotice’s Concentri product is one of the most robust around for cohesively marketing to consumers via mobile, Internet, and other customized points of connection. (Full disclosure: Knotice is a JumpStart Ventures portfolio company). Creating a plan for our email communication and website to become more mobile-friendly has been on the list for over 6 months; now that I’ve read Morgan Stanley’s Mobile Internet report which indicates — among other things – that more people will connect to the internet via mobile devices instead of desktops within 5 years, a more thorough strategy is due.

2) Continue to evolve our social media strategy and implementation. Continuous planning, prioritization, and implementation is the way of the marketer’s world, but social media has put the disciplined, steady approach into hyperdrive. What we had decided to do 3 months ago is already worth reconsideration and perhaps even a change in approach. Given the time commitment that these tools require, monthly review and consideration is required.

1) Focus on insights. While the world is always changing, this stays the same: insight regarding the needs and wants of our audiences, consumers, customers, and constituents should drive what we do. In a small entrepreneurial firm without a formal research group, it’s easy to slip in into believing all people think a certain way because you have talked to a handful of people who share an opinion. And now that it’s so much easier than ever to gain small and large insights formally or informally on a much more regular basis, there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be asking and gaining new insights on a monthly basis. With that – look for more questions from us about how we can better meet YOUR needs. (You can start with suggestions and ideas by commenting on this blog!).

What’s on your 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.

Here’s a run-down of some cool things that the companies in the JumpStart Ventures portfolio accomplished this month:

• Synapse Biomedical, which has a diaphragm pacing device to aid breathing for people with ALS or spinal cord injuries, confirmed that it is on track to more than triple last year’s revenue.
• Embrace Pet Insurance has surpassed its budget four of the past four months and is among the top-two in the industry in customer satisfaction.
• MAR Systems, which has a water treatment technology, is working with pilot customers; with one of those customers, MAR has proven that its technology is greater than 1000 times more efficient at removing mercury from waste water than the incumbent technology.
• Myers Motors, an all-electric vehicle company, announced its two-seater design.  One blogger wrote “I do wonder whether Myers may have just eaten Aptera’s lunch with this update.”
• Stanton Advanced Ceramics, which offers a non-traditional ceramic composite material that makes refractories more energy efficient and longer lasting, brought on paying customers with a coating version of its FireSlayer technology.
• CardioInsight Technologies, which has an electrocardiographic imaging technology and whose CEO has very successfully commercialized numerous cardiac technologies (raised $200 million, did IPO, etc), reached agreement with five key centers in the US and Europe to conduct clinical studies.
• iGuiders, which offers guided Internet search, forged a key partnership with an industry player and this partnership is potentially worth $23 million over five years. 
• Knotice, year-to-date, has increased the number of customers in key industries (retail, hospitality, consumer products, cable and telco, and financial services) by 75%, while growing revenue 50% and net income over 400% versus the same period of time in 2008.

They make these types of accomplishments every month. We catalog these accomplishments internally, and I’m going to be blogging about these more frequently externally. I think you’ll be impressed by the catalog of accomplishments these entrepreneurs achieve every single month. I know I am.

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.

You might have read my blog post from a few weeks ago, about the JumpStart TechLift Advisors‘ panel discussion directed toward current college students and recent grads, entitled “Starting Your Career at an Entrepreneurial Technology Company”. The event featured CEOs from two small, entrepreneurial companies, Ron Zieske of Heat Seal, and Andy Sherman of Powdermet/MesoCoat, along with Megan Mealy, head of college recruiting at Rosetta. The panel was rounded out by three recent grads who are now working in entrepreneurial environments: Jeff Bargiel (Case Western) who is in business development at PhyCal, Liz Mather (Stevens Institute of Technology), a Product Manager at US Endoscopy, and Leslie Matt (University of Akron) who is a Marketing Coordinator at Knotice. Halley Marsh of NOCHE moderated the panel.

The event was sold out, with over 70 people in attendance. The discussion was lively, and the questions kept coming from the audience of mostly 20-somethings who wanted to know how to connect with small companies, how to get the job, and what the environment and expectations are like once you’re in. 

Here are some of the top takeaways and comments from the panelists:

How Do I Connect with Entrepreneurial Companies?

• The most important message was that you need to reach out to the small companies. They will not always be in the places where one typically looks for jobs like Monster.com, hotjobs.com, the classifieds, etc.
• Watch the business section of the paper to see which companies have received funding, gotten a big customer order or are announcing something. This indicates that they are active and are more likely to be hiring.
• Join free on-line newsletters in the industries you are interested in…it is a great way to keep up with the industry, and to know who is active. An example would be MDD in medical devices, but every industry has many newsletters for each of its sub-sectors.
• Join other, more general newsletters and news services like Crain’s Cleveland Business online, and even Cool Cleveland.
• Find and connect directly with the right person within the organization. One of the recent grads told the story of how she kept digging until she got the email address for the company’s Marketing VP. She got a job that was not even slated for a recent grad, but the VP was impressed by her aggressiveness and decided to consider her.
• Your cover letter should say something specific about the company (i.e. markets, technology, business model). Standard cover letters, obviously “cut and pasted” can be a turn off.
• Something on your resume, like internship experience or technology specifics, should stand out to get your resume put into the “consider” pile.
• Realize that timing is everything with small companies. If they don’t have funding, they probably cannot hire you right now, even if they love you. They also often aren’t as organized in their approach as larger companies. The opportunity is for the right candidate to “just appear” at the right time, with the right message, and the right skill set.

How Do I Get the Job?

• One employer stressed the need for the candidate to tell the company how they could affect their bottom line — pretty direct.
• Know your elevator pitch and sell yourself on your added value. Be able to relate your skills, attributes and background to the company’s situation.
• Respect an entrepreneur’s time and don’t waste it. Every sentence in your cover letter should be concise and meaningful.
• Be genuinely interested in what the person or company does.Employers can tell right away who is truly interested, and who is just desperate for a job.
• Do your homework. If you come to the interview without finding out everything you possibly could about the company (much easier today with internet resources), you are unlikely to get the job.
• Although small companies don’t have the time or budget to train you, they tend to like direct relevant experience, which works against a recent graduate. Despite that, a high potential recent grad often has a huge advantage, because they carry lower price tags, salary-wise, will work lots of hours, and don’t come with “baggage” from previous employers.

What Can I Expect Once I Have the Job?

• Small companies require you to be flexible, to figure things out for yourself, and be a person who doesn’t need a lot of structure.
• You will likely take on more responsibility in an entrepreneurial company. You need to be up to that challenge.
• You aren’t going to get the same level of training and processes that you would get in a larger company environment. This is a tradeoff, as this experience is often valuable in your toolset. It is balanced, however, by the fact that you get to do more things, more quickly in an entrepreneurial company than you would otherwise.
• Be willing to “break the rules” — all of the employers and recent hires told stories about how people in their companies used creativity and sometimes off-beat approaches to problems. It doesn’t mean that you do “crazy things”, as that could lead to big problems, but that you tend to not take “no” for an answer, and that you can think your way through things.
• The entrepreneurial company is not for everyone, and is not always the best first career experience. That said, there are tremendous opportunities in small companies, and it is certainly a path that each college graduate should consider.

And, if that wasn’t enough information on what everyone learned at the event, fellow blogger Toni Chanakas wrote about it on Brewed Fresh Daily too!

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.