Replanting the Economic Forest in Northeast Ohio (cont.)

The solution was to consolidate and sharpen existing efforts to support economic development and add new elements to the mix, with a focus on nurturing the region’s entrepreneurs and providing the critical early-stage funding that drives their success. NorTech partnered with the region’s leading university, Case Western Reserve University (Case) to merge several entrepreneurial support organizations into JumpStart. Case and NorTech remain the parents of JumpStart.

JumpStart received its initial funding from several sources, including the State of Ohio and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a consortium of the regional corporate community. Simultaneously, farsighted philanthropic concerns in the region such as the Cleveland and Gund Foundations banded together with other groups to create the Fund for Our Economic Future, a consolidation of 62 regional entities, which created a charitable fund earmarked for economic development. The Fund examined JumpStart’s approach, performed due diligence on similar organizations, and decided to invest substantial resources into making JumpStart a reality.

This partnership between state and federal funding, combined with private financial support from foundations, individuals and corporations, all coordinated on a regional basis, recently was cited as a national example to follow in the National Innovation Initiative Report published in December by the Council on Competitiveness.

With the support of these groups, JumpStart has embarked on its mission: providing focused resources to entrepreneurs and the community in order to grow bright ideas into brilliant companies. To that end, we focus on developing the businesses and ideas that have the potential to grow to $30 to $50 million in annual revenues in five to seven years.

Social networks, deep expertise and risk-friendly capital

JumpStart officially opened for business in January of 2004 as a nonprofit corporation with a staff of former serial entrepreneurs, investment professionals and support staff, all with extensive experience in entrepreneurial endeavors.

We chose to focus in three specific areas:

• Social networks: JumpStart Exchange is our plan for building the social networks, public awareness and regional interest necessary to encourage an entrepreneurial culture in Northeast Ohio. By facilitating events that are primarily social, educational and promotional in nature, we enable entrepreneurs and supporters of entrepreneurship to gather, exchange ideas and make critical connections, developing the human capital necessary to grow the region.

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