Venture Capital : Featured Stories

Steve Case recently came to Cleveland to address entrepreneurial leaders from across the country who had gathered for the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds conference. After praising Ohio's innovation economy, he said that the key to creating more jobs in the U.S. is to support entrepreneurs and high-growth companies and argued policy leaders need to do more to spur innovation.

Thanks to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, entrepreneurs often overlooked by traditional investment sources are securing much-needed capital to launch their startups. In addition to raising cash, these sites are proving invaluable for testing new ideas, developing a customer base, gaining exposure, and launching ideas into a larger marketplace.

If you're looking for evidence that venture capitalists are increasingly flocking to Ohio, look no further than the success of Athenian Venture Partners, whose 2003 AVP Ohio fund was recently ranked the top fund of its vintage by Preqin. That success is testament to the increasingly vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ohio, which is drawing venture capital.

In the past decade, the Youngstown Business Incubator has created more than 400 software jobs in downtown Youngstown. Nearly all of these 32 companies are still in the heart of the Mahoning Valley. hiVelocity recently caught up with YBI Chief Evangelist Jim Cossler to talk about Youngstown's burgeoning tech scene and his unusual model of not graduating companies.

Despite its rich, historic assets, the City of Dayton has for decades been outcompeted by larger cities when it comes to attracting young professionals. Now city leaders are launching a broad effort to change that by focusing on recruiting and retaining college graduates through internship programs and other opportunities.

A not-so-quiet revolution is taking place at the Entrepreneurship Innovation Center at Lorain County Community College. The organizations and companies located here are helping to propel Ohio's innovation economy forward. Now its newest tenant, the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds, is launching educational programs and a national conference to build on the momentum.

Equity-based crowdfunding will allow everyone the opportunity to become a venture capitalist. But is this a good thing? Remember the dot-com bubble that burst in the 1990s? Yet while crowdfunding brings a certain amount of risk, even skeptics say that it has the potential to bring an important source of new capital to Ohio. The emerging phenomenon could also empower a new class of investors.

Mike Figliuolo is a former Army officer, McKinsey and Company consultant, Capital One Financial strategist, and a VP for Scotts Lawn Service. Today, he runs a practitioner-led leadership training firm, is an angel investor for tech startups, heads several web-based businesses and is a principal at a Dublin business accelerator. Oh, and he's writing a book. It's an unwieldy job description, but Figliuolo makes it simple: "I'm a parallel entrepreneur."