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.

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.

PerfectPitch, the national competition in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas via a video submission and can end up presenting to the country’s leading venture capitalists, debuted in 2009 with truly 2009 marketing techniques (including the opportunity for an entrepreneur to pitch based on who submitted the best Twitter pitch).

It’s now back again and as with last year, entrepreneurs who are able to react quickly have an advantage. (The deadline is August 26th, which is two weeks away). Here’s what you do:

• Submit your pitch ONLINE - a pitch may include a written description, photos, and video about your BUSINESS or IDEA
• Deadline for submissions is August 26th, 2010. Early applicants will receive helpful feedback and may make edits to improve their pitches
• Judges will review all pitches – Top 3 win prizes and an invitation to pitch LIVE to investors and the audience of the PerfectBusiness Summit 2010

You can find full details here on entering, including the list of investors representing over $10 billion in assets who will be judging. (Did I mention that JumpStart’s own Ray Leach is one of the judges, as is North Coast Angel’s Todd Federman and venture capitalists from leading investors such as DFJ and Google?)

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.

Last week, Dan Primack continued his discussion from the week before on peHUB about the numbers being published on national trends in Venture Capital fundraising — and what it all means. His general conclusion was that the numbers are hardly worth celebrating. His three reasons why:

1. Bigger fundraising totals do not necessarily translate to better returns.
2. Even if size does matter, improving over H1 2009 is no great feat.
3. The two major databases - Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters aren’t consistent.

I couldn’t agree with him more.

I decided to engage in the conversation - and to continue the discussion here. Here is the comment I posted back to Dan:

Dan,
Thanks for bringing to light the challenges involved in data collection. Our organization takes the lead in collecting and publishing the amount of venture investment just in Northeast Ohio and it is a laborious task.

When two reputable data collectors come up with contradictory information I think the only option is to call it inconclusive, as you have wisely done. Given the uncertainty in the data, the only thing to do is talk to entrepreneurs to get real, if only anecdotal, data. Here in NEO I know that our entrepreneurs are definitely feeling more “Thompson” than “Dow Jones” – growth capital is very difficult to come by.

As you point out, big funds are not necessarily the most successful funds. I’d like to see venture turn back to its roots of smaller funds, managed by a handful of close-knit partners who have relevant backgrounds in the industries in which they are investing. Smaller funds mean smaller management fees and I think that’s a good thing. Venture investing becomes more personal, the principals have everything riding on their ability to generate great IRRs (rather than collecting current income via huge management fees.) So, I’m actually okay if the total dollars invested in venture nationally goes down, just to long as the number of firms managing the money increases.

What do you think?

Lynn-Ann Gries is the Chief Investment Officer of JumpStart Ventures. She previously worked in the investment banking departments at both McDonald Investments and Smith Barney (now part of Citigroup), and in the sales and trading area at Morgan Stanley. She received her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and her BA in Economics from Smith College. She currently serves on the board of the Fund for the Future of Shaker Heights, the Great Lakes Science Center and Summer on the Cuyahoga (SOTC).