Columbus/Central Ohio : Innovation + Job News

Platform Lab, a nonprofit information technology test and training facility in Columbus, had some big news to share last month. It appointed Silicon Valley veteran Ron Landthorn as Director and launched its new Data Center Solution Partner Program.

Landthorn has recently returned home to his native Columbus following a career in Silicon Valley working in international sales and business development for IT firms. He is a graduate of the Ohio State University with a degree in electrical engineering and has worked in engineering and management for businesses such as Procter & Gamble and AccuRay.

“My wife and I grew up here and it was always our intention to come back,” he says.  “I’m enthused about what’s happening in Ohio with technology development.”

Landthorn created the new program to help Platform Lab’s 200-plus clients gain better access to cloud backup solutions. The recently launched program is an important new collaboration with the Lab’s community of data protection suppliers that will help to protect data used and stored on the Internet.

“We’ve put together goals that can help us grow our respective business,” he says.

Platform Lab is the nation’s only state-funded IT test & training facility. It offers affordable access to IT infrastructure for testing, cloud computing, development and projects. “We give your company a competitive advantage by offering flexible, scalable services,” Platform Lab's website states. “Utilize Platform Lab solutions instead of investing in short-term hardware and software solutions that are difficult to manage and time-consuming.”

Columbus-based Veeam Software was selected as the program's first partner. Veeam has developed a large worldwide clientele and is considered one of the fastest growing and most innovative data protection suppliers in the world.

The Lab's Partner Program offers a win-win for business clients: first, it helps them to protect data, avoid costly mistakes and foster maximum productivity; second, it helps them to test such IT solutions to ensure they work optimally. 

Platform Lab is located within TechColumbus, a public-private partnership whose mission is to accelerate the development of Central Ohio’s innovation economy.


Source: Ron Landthorn
Writer: Val Prevish

Last year hiVelocity spoke with Mitch McLeod, founder of Columbus-based software company ARCOS, Inc. Utility companies across the country depend on his company’s Automated Crew Callout and Resource Management System when there’s a power outage or other emergency. The web-based system instantly finds, assembles and tracks repair crews, thus reducing the duration of such events. McLeod recently assumed an advisory role so we contacted his successor, Bruce Duff, for an update on the company and his plans for the future. The new CEO has more than 25 years of experience in the software industry, including assignments across North America, Europe and Australia. He previously worked for Pathlore Software Corp., Information Dimensions, Inc. and Foresight Corp. Duff has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the “Thunderbird” School of Global Management.


Q:  What happened to former CEO Mitch McLeod?
A:  Mitch McLeod, now chairman of ARCOS, focuses on the company’s long-range business plan and oversees the executive committee. He’s researching and evaluating industry trends and mentoring the ARCOS team.

Q:  Has the company’s focus changed since his departure?
A:  No. We’re still focused on electric and gas utilities as well as power-generation plants. Frankly, ARCOS wants to serve every utility in the United States.

Q:  At the time of our interview with your predecessor, utilities in 23 states were using your software and the company had 18 employees. Have those numbers changed?
A:  Utilities in 35 states now use our software, and we have 25 employees. We now serve all the utilities covering the State of New York, the first state entirely covered by ARCOS.

Q:  How did you rise to your present position?
A:  Three years ago, Mitch asked me to build and lead a national sales team. He wanted me to help guide new-business implementations and get our marketing rolling. After a few years of success on these fronts, Mitch felt the next step to scaling the business for the size of the opportunity in front of us was to develop a leader to whom he could delegate his day-to-day responsibilities. With my previous executive experience and Mitch’s trust, I was tapped for the job.

Q:  How does your management style differ from that of your predecessor?
A:  I guess you could say Mitch is ARCOS’s father -- he built it. I suppose I’m the adopted father. I care every bit as much for the people and the business, but I didn’t have the benefit of seeing the company from its infancy. So I’m probably a little less hands-on because ARCOS has grown big enough to walk independently and, in some ways, even run.

Q:  What challenges is your company facing?
A:  We have many opportunities in front of us. However, we want to address them all with a 100-percent success rate. We don’t want to leave a single customer behind in terms of delivering the level of customer service we’ve become famous for among utilities.

Q:  Are you developing any new products (software)?
A:  Yes. Last year we launched our mobile app for emergency callout and resource management. From a smartphone, a utility company manager can assemble a crew and track work progress. We also have a software add-on that we nicknamed “closest to the trouble.” It’s a proximity-based location service that lets a utility know where its workforce is at any given time and expedites repair work by sending the nearest resource to an outage, gas leak or other emergency.

Q:  Can you briefly describe how your software works?
A:  It’s a hosted, internet-based software system that automatically locates and assembles utility repair crews beyond normal business hours. When a power outage is reported, a dispatcher or manager taps into the ARCOS System, which automatically makes phone calls to assemble repair crews. The system displays a dashboard of real-time statistics, including response times. The system also tracks employee status, taking into account any union agreements or workforce rules. Each crewmember has a PIN that identifies and tracks their response.

Q:  How has the company grown?
A:  We’ve won a Columbus Fast 50 Award five years in a row. The award recognizes companies for financial growth and performance over the past three years. We expect to be on the Fast 50 in 2012, too. We’re also making inroads with the gas utility industry, having added at least five gas utilities in the past 12 months.

Q:  Is there one question you wish we had asked?
A:  Yes. Why is this new position exciting? ARCOS is among one of the few companies I’ve worked for where everything you need to manage effectively has come together. We have a high-quality product that’s incredibly reliable. The culture here is one in which people pride themselves on anticipating customers’ needs and responding quickly. Our customers say: “ARCOS is the vendor we wish all our other vendors were like.” The utility market is hungry for additional solutions and techniques to respond quickly to customers and to protect the public. Who wouldn’t want to be at the front of that?

Author: Patrick Mahoney
 

A Dublin-based startup Mobile Expeditions is building its future around mobile technology as a growing number of people buy smart phone and tablets like the iPad.

Mobile Expeditions has developed platforms for location-based, media-rich tours, presentations and games that can be used on iPhones, iPads and iPodTouch devices. The applications' content can be customized by users, like an art museum, business or a city, looking to offer people a more engaging experience during an outing or an event.

The company was founded in 2009 by business partners and two software-industry veterans Mark Gilicinski and Sean Boiarski, who saw the potential of such mobile applications after the iPhone was first released in mid-2007. Though there were smart phones before the iPhone, its easy-to-use design, multimedia features and touch screen revolutionized--and popularized--smart phone use.

"I've been involved in software during my entire career. When the iPhone came out there was a computer that you could write software for, and have access to data network that fit in your pocket. It was pretty cool," Gilicinski said.

Mobility paired with high speed-data and multimedia capabilities has led to an explosion of mobile applications like games, virtual tours, and virtual product demonstrations that companies use to promote their brands, products and services.

Many times these mobile applications are custom applications built by developers that can be quite expensive. Mobile Expeditions is developing platforms that its clients can quickly download and populate with its own content including videos, text, audio and pictures.

So far the company has more than a dozen clients, including Celebrity Cruises and Columbus, Ohio’s COSI (Center of Science and Industry). Celebrity Cruises has used the platform to create self-guided tours of its ships' extensive art collections. Through interactive maps, art lovers can locate specific works, and by touching location points on a piece can find more detail like the title, artist’s name, medium and description.

This year Mobile Expeditions is working to expand its client base and has recently hired a sales person. The self-funded company is located in the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center and was propelled from idea to business through TechColumbus's 1492 Business Launch competition and a $50,000 Tech Genesis Grant.

By Feoshia Henderson

To spur economic development and create jobs in their communities, several Ohio cities have created new, hyperlocal funds that offer attractive financing to entrepreneurs that may have the next great business idea, yet lack the actual cash to implement it. The catch? They must be willing to put down roots and grow their businesses locally.

One example of a growing Ohio business that recently took advantage of such hometown love is ManuscriptTracker, a Wooster-based firm that sells web-based software that automates the peer review process for academic journals. Co-founder Brian Boyer says a $35,000 deferred-payment loan from the Wooster Opportunities Loan Fund made it possible for him to bring his product to market last year.

“We saw lots of potential to grow our business, but funding is very hard to come by for start-up software companies,” says Boyer, a Wooster native. “Thanks to receiving funding last year, we were able to develop a market version of our software, as well as sales resources such as a database, marketing collateral and potential client list.”

ManuscriptTracker’s software organizes and automates peer review tracking for busy academics that don’t have the time or resources to manage the process themselves. The stringent nature of the peer review process, particularly with scientific journals, often necessitates involving as many as 20 individuals in a single review.

“To be published in an academic journal, your work must be vetted by the research of your peers, but that means asking top researchers to set aside their time,” explains Boyer. “We simplify and organize the process and provide helpful reporting forms. We also help academics to track who in their network is quick and knowledgeable.”

With the assistance of the economic development nonprofit Jumpstart, similar hyperlocal funds have also been created in Barberton, Canton and Mansfield.

As the New Year kicked off, ManuscriptTracker had already secured one new client, and Boyer says he’s hopeful that the new software will attract additional clients soon.


By Lee Chilcote

Tell us if you’ve heard this one before. You’re sitting in your car. Alone. While your friends are frantically texting you to find out just where, exactly, are you because you are now, officially, 15 minutes late to the party.

The lateness has earned you a reputation. Dublin-based software company Ripple Mobile might be able to help. They’re making friendships and relationships stronger by offering OnTime, a GPS-powered app that pulls meeting information from your web-based and mobile calendars and ties it to current weather and traffic patterns to give you the quickest route to your destination. The $1.99 mobile app, available now for the iPhone and Blackberry, will also alert you when it's time to leave and then text or email the people waiting for you as to whether you will be on-time or late. An Android version is under development.

"I think a lot of times busy people fill their calendars with events and aren’t always aware of how long it's going to take them to get them some place,” says Ripple Mobile co-founder Kevin Miller. “That can happen especially if you're in a new location that you're not familiar with. OnTime provides them with a little less required planning and allows them to be more productive.”

It’s one of two mobile apps Ripple Mobile has developed. The other, Ripple Tag, allows friends with Smart Phones to find each other's locations in real time and setup a place to meet.

Ripple Mobile was founded in 2002 and is housed in the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center. The company has three employees and earlier this year received a TechGenesis Grant through Tech Columbus.

Conservation has always been a major concern for zoos, from habitat conservation to protecting animal populations with dwindling numbers. Two Ohio zoos, though, are leading the way into another branch of conservation--energy conservation.
 
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens and the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium have both made headlines in the last two years for their green technology efforts, investing millions while enlisting help from the state's green industry to become leaders in the field.
 
Over the past five years, the Cincinnati Zoo has invested $1 million in energy improvements, upgrading 73 buildings--including elevating five to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and other initiatives like switching to energy-saving LED lights for its annual holiday display.
 
The biggest splash in the Ohio zoo green movement is just starting to pay off, though. Earlier this year, the zoo completed construction on an $11 million, four-acre, 15-foot high "solar canopy" that covers 800 spaces in its parking lot. The system, billed as the largest, publicly accessible urban solar array in the country, consists of 6,400 panels that generate 1.56 megawatts--providing nearly 20 percent of the zoo's energy requirements.
 
Along with saving the zoo millions in energy costs, the project also includes education benefits. It funds 10 scholarships at Cincinnati State's Green Workforce Development Program and includes an onsite kiosk that shows the array's performance and extolls the virtue of solar energy. The zoo began using the array in April, soon after completion.
 
Melink Corp., owned by green technology activist Steve Melink, designed the structure and served as developer. It also secured the financing for the array, and will operate the array for the zoo. The Milford-based company jumped onto the "green bandwagon" early, specializing in high-efficiency restaurant exhaust systems since 1987 before moving into solar projects over the past decade.
 
Thane Maynard, executive director of the zoo, said there was no better place to showcase solar technology.
 
"As the greenest zoo in America, there is no better place to showcase this technology and to help the public understand that not only is this technology the right thing to do for our energy future," he said, "but it makes absolute financial sense as well."
 
The Cincy Zoo might have a battle on its hands for the "greenest" title, though.
 
Just up I-71, the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium announced in October plans for a solar array to surpass its Cincinnati counterpart. Construction starts next year. 
 
"We're excited about the solar array," says zoo director of planning Barbara Revard. "Everything's still in the planning stages, but I think we're comfortable in saying that we think it will be somewhere between a 2.5-to-3 megawatt system."
 
Taking the lead in the project is Athens-based Third Sun Solar, one of the state's fastest-growing solar firms. Founded in 2000 by the aptly named Geoff and Michelle Greenfield and operating out of the Innovation Center at Ohio University, the company has become a regional leader in implementing solar technology. It's been named to Inc. magazine's “Inc. 5,000" for three years in a row.
 
The planned solar array isn’t the only trick in Columbus zoo's green hat, however. Three years ago, it opted to utilize geothermal technology in another of its projects, the Polar Frontier exhibit. Opening this past May, the $20 million exhibit circulates 300,000 gallons of water to a tank that serves as home to polar bears. The mostly underground system keeps the water at a constant chilled temperature, using a fraction of the energy of other options.

The zoo has also "gone green" in other areas, from pioneering use of new Flux Drive pump products that have led to a 40 percent reduction in energy costs, to recently installing "smart skylights" in one of its buildings.
 
The skylights, produced by Ciralight Global out of Corona, Calif., consist of motorized mirrors and sensors that rotate the mirrors to catch sunlight and reflect it inside, where its needed. The result is an electricity-independent, natural light source that provides better light at less cost.

"We joke that we're finding things in the warehouse that we didn't even realize were there," says Revard.
 
Columbus-based Energy Solutions Group worked with the zoo on bringing the "flux drive" and skylights into the fold.
 
Both the Cincinnati and Columbus zoos are leaders in implementing green technology, but they're far from alone. Every few months, representatives from all Ohio's zoos get together to talk about moving toward more environmentally friendly initiatives. The group, called the Ohio Zoo Green Consortium, consists of about 30 representatives from around the state, said Revard.
 
"The fun thing for us all is working together and talking about what we're doing, what's working well and what's next," said Revard. "It's our hope that we can not only share that information with other zoos in Ohio, but also serve as a model to zoos outside the state."

Edison Ventures, a New Jersey-based venture capital firm that specializes in helping innovative, established companies grow, has a new Ohio office up north that has made a mark in the Buckeye state by dropping its first $6.5 million Ohio investment into the Columbus-based software company Call Copy.

“We'd been tracking Call Copy since 2007 and were impressed by its growth and leadership,” says Michael Kopelman, partner at Edison Ventures, of the company’s growth from a simple software development company for call centers to a multi-purpose company that also provides in-house support for that software as well as the job process involved in using it. “There is a trend of many companies moving to Voice Over IP technologies, and they are more open to looking at other call center solutions.”

Call Copy develops innovative contact center software for dozens of industries from banking and healthcare to energy and insurance. This summer it was named to Inc. 500's list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., with three-year sales growth of 831 percent.

“They make products that are very intuitive in an industry where there is a lot of turnover,” says Kopelman, and “quick training is absolutely critical.”

Edison Ventures, founded in 1986, is firmly committed to making continued Midwest investments following its expansion in to D.C., New England and New York. It opened its newest office in Cleveland in February. Chris Sklarin, who helped found JumpStart in Cleveland, heads the Edison Midwest office.

“We think this is an undeserved market,” says Michael Kopelman, partner at Edison Ventures. “We've done 44 deals in Pennsylvania, and in its close neighbor Ohio we see a great opportunity.”

Edison invests in established companies that have proved successful, but are looking to scale their products or services across the United States or internationally. Since its founding, Edison has made 180 investments, that have resulted in 110 exits and is in its seventh fund, Kopelman says. Edison's generally invests in fast-growing companies doing $5 million to $20 million in revenue and will invest from $5 million to $10 million.

Youngstown State University’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) College announced this month it has landed a record four concurrent grants totaling $5.2 million from Ohio’s Third Frontier program. The two work closely to enhance technical education and to provide employment opportunities for students.
 
“Third Frontier criteria ensures not only that you have good science and engineering but also good commercialization potential,” said the school’s research director, Mike Hripko. “And each of (YSU’s four projects funded by Third Frontier) has demonstrated the promise of commercialization and advancement of the science,”
 
Founded in 2007, the STEM College received four concurrent grants from the state including a $1.6 million grant which funds a partnership with M-7 Technologies to develop manufacturing equipment.
 
Another $1 million will go to YSU’s Department of Material Science and Engineering Third Millennium Metals to study a carbon infused copper metallic composite that will reduce wire size and increase conductivity.
 
A third $1 million grant supports cooperation with Delphi Corporation on aluminum battery cable for use in electric and hybrid vehicles and the final $1 million goes to the Department of Chemistry for its work with Polyflow Inc. on converting polymer waste (i.e., plastic bottles, containers) into fuel. Another $600K is earmarked for capital equipment to support the research.
 
 “Youngstown is a hard-working town, and our students have a good work ethic that’s evident in their interfaces with our business partners,” said Hripko. “We have a reputation for being very business savvy and very manufacturing savvy. The college often works with industries which are indigenous to the region, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing, in particular.”
 
The university’s STEM College enrolls roughly 2,500 students plus 250 graduate students.

“Not many companies want to do what we do,” says Adel Mikhail, CEO of Phylogeny, Inc., in Columbus.

What Phylogeny does, according to Mikhail, is “help accelerate the discovery of new therapeutics and diagnostics for human health by enabling scientists to achieve excellence in functional genomic research.”

Phylogeny provides a range of expertise to help scientists at companies and institutes understand key biological processes about how genes function, he explains.

“Our clients in the corporate sector include most biotech companies and all the top-tier pharmaceutical companies,” he notes.

Scientists can outsource certain aspects of discovery research and development to Phylogeny instead of performing the studies in house themselves.

“Our experts perform the complicated research studies that are important for biological discovery,” he says. ”The type of research we provide requires a tremendous amount of experience and expertise and is difficult and costly to perform.”

Phylogeny was established in 2002 by Adel Mikhail and Craig Mello. Mello shared  the 2006 Nobel Prize in physiology for the discovery of RNAi, a long chain of nucleotide units that can turn genes off.

“By using RNAi, we explore the function of genes,” Mikhail explains. “RNAi can be used therapeutically to regulate genes involved in a disease process. It’s just one of the ways to study the biology of specific genes.”

Phylogeny’s scientists have been instrumental in bringing important drugs in the areas of cancer, obesity and osteoporosis to clinical trial.

According to Mikhail, their top three scientists have collectively authored more than 800 publications and can provide very quick insight to their clients.

The company has 21 employees, numerous contractors and part-time staff and received funding from Ohio’s Third Frontier initiative in both 2004 and 2010.

Source:  Adel Mikhail, Phylogeny, Inc.  
Writer:  Lynne Meyer

Advanced materials manufacturer entrotech has built a strong and thriving business doing something few others do, says President and CEO Jim McGuire: creating advanced materials solutions from concept to marketplace.

The company develops film-based materials used to create and improve products in the electronics, biomedical, transportation and aerospace industries. Unlike many larger advanced materials companies, entrotech takes these solutions from the research and development stage to marketing and manufacturing. The company's chemistry-based approached allows it to innovate and meet real needs in the industry in a cost-effective way, McGuire says.

McGuire, an Ohio State University grad with a background in chemistry, founded entrotech to fill a need in the advanced materials market.

"I felt there was need for a chemistry-based advance materials company. Very few people create their own solutions from the ground up," McGuire says.

The company develops, manufactures and sells its own branded products and sometimes works with other companies to get products to market.

Among companies that have used entrotech's materials are Avery Dennison, Medline, Hewlett Packard, Western Digital, Dell, Microsoft, Gillette, Jaguar, Daimler Benz and Honda.

The Columbus-based company employees 90 people – and recently hired three employees -- with offices in Ohio, Southern California, San Francisco and Singapore, Malaysia. About 40 percent of those employees work in Ohio, he says.

The company got its start at OSU's Business Technology Center before moving to nearby office space in Columbus. It was founded through a mix of angel investment and self-funding, but has received some state support. Last year the company received $2 million from Ohio Research and Development Investment Loan Fund to purchase equipment that allows it to expand its research and development capabilities.

Source: Jim McGuire, entrotech
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

A central Ohio-wide effort by businesses, universities and public-private partnerships is needed to bridge the gaps between business needs and the IT worker competencies needed in the next five years, says a new study released late last week.

TechColumbus and Columbus State Community College, with funding from the Ohio Skills Bank, worked in partnership with Wright State University and Community Research Partners in a four-month analysis of businesses, contractors, consultants, IT workers and universities. The objective was to identify the growth rate for IT jobs, the replacement rate for jobs and the mix of needed jobs and skills.

The study found that between 2006 and last year, 9,000 new IT jobs were created in central Ohio, but that an additional 23,500 IT workers will be needed by 2016. The problem is, there currently aren't enough skilled workers to fill those slots.

The study found:

-- A shortage of workers with required technical skills
-- A need to develop the current workforce in areas relating to soft skills, critical thinking skills and business acumen
-- A shortage of relevant worker training programs
-- Difficulty retaining students in Central Ohio after graduation
-- Increasing worker competition and poaching among local firms
-- Difficulty attracting and retaining talent from outside the region and state
-- Changing relationships and processes between IT contractors and buyers that contribute to the worker shortage.
-- Structural changes in the workforce due to increasing number of “free agents” and aging baby boomers moving into retirement

The report recommends short-term actions that include training programs for high demand jobs, a greater emphasis on internships, innovative collaborative practices among educators, business and public/private partnerships, innovative career and retention practices and regional marketing and recruiting initiatives.

Long term, the report suggests actions ranging from a collaborative system to exchange supply and demand across business and university communities, to marketing central Ohio as a “cool” community.

Tim Haynes, VP of member services and marketing for TechColumbus, says the study was launched based on growing perceptions of the IT environment during the past three to four years. He says the results should provide additional impetus for those affected by the skills gap to work together.

“We believe that many organizations in a position to mitigate the issue will act on this opportunity purely because it’s in their business or program’s best interest,” Haynes says. “In other words, sharing this information will be a catalyst. At the same time, more funding may become (available) to accelerate improvements.”

Source: TechColumbus and Tim Haynes
Writer: Gene Monteith

Founders Justin Spring and Danielle Walton had small businesses in mind when they developed BringShare. The Columbus-based start-up is an Internet-based tool geared toward meeting the online marketing needs of entrepreneurs, small businesses and marketers.

BringShare provides clients with an integrated platform from which they are able to see all of their online marketing data in a single dashboard. The overall goal of the service is to help users make informed marketing decisions that are more efficient and cost effective.

"BringShare does what other data aggregating services don't," says Spring. "It compiles all online marketing initiatives and presents the data in a way that is consistent and makes it simple to identify which efforts provide the best return on investment, which approaches need to be modified, and those initiatives that aren't paying off."

The site was built to be user-friendly. BringShare users can easily generate reports and evaluate which of their marketing efforts are generating growth, and which aren't.

"The amount of time marketers and small businesses spend gathering data from different channels, developing marketing reports and analyzing the results can add up to 20 to 40 hours of time each month. BringShare simplifies that process to a matter of minutes," Spring says. He estimates that BringShare's average monthly cost is less than one hour of a marketing professional's time.   

BringShare currently has five full-time employees. Each of these positions were created within the last year, and the company anticipates future hiring.
 
TechColumbus, which provides OhioThird Frontier support to emerging businesses, provided BringShare with a $50,000 TechGenesis development grant.  Additionally, TechColumbus provided BringShare with $250,000 in pre-seed funding and $150,000 from its Co-Investment Fund. Investors include the Ohio TechAngels.

Source: Justin Spring, BringShare
Writer: Kitty McConnell

When entrepreneurs go in search of capital, a common mantra is "go big or go home." One company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., and suburban Columbus, is helping them do just that -- find the funding to launch their businesses.

Go BIG Network, which has offices in Powell, is an online service that help connects people with ideas with that funding. Started in 2004 by Wil Schroter, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" with eight start-ups to his name that have generated over $2 billion annually, the service helps its clients navigate the fund-raising process, prepare pitches to prospective investors and even identify its own capital streams.

Its services run from a $59 monthly fee for access to its pool of thousands of those investors to $300 guided searches and consulting to reach the right angel investors, venture capitalists and private investors.

"We have a rolodex of investors that we've worked with and that we know, and we steer our clients to those investors that are the best fit," says Ilya Bodner, Go BIG's senior vice president of business development. "What we do exceptionally well, though, is help people prepare for that 'magic phone call.'"

According to Bodner, that is where most entrepreneurs fail, translating their ideas into a cohesive plan that attract the attention of those investors.

"Thinking you are prepared and actually being prepared are two different things. It leads to a lot of false hope, going into a pitch thinking you have everything lined up, then falling short," he explains.

The website also offers plenty of free information, explaining the investment process, pitfalls to avoid and other tips. It also offers a live chat for quick, one-on-one advice.

According to the company, to date more than 300,000 subscribers have used the service — both investors and those seeking funding -- to spur millions in economic growth.

"All we can say is that it works," says Bodner. "Our track record proves it."

Source: Ilya Bodner, Go BIG Network
Writer: Dave Malaska

Imagine pursuing a degree that requires you to understand caves, mines or other rugged geological formations. Now imagine trying to do your field studies in a wheelchair.

Concerns like that may be rendered moot if virtual technology being developed at Ohio State University and Georgia State University bear fruit.

The two institutions, tapping the power of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, are in the early stages of a study to show whether a virtual environment can be built that is powerful enough to give students and others with disabilities the virtual field experience they need to enter the geosciences in increased numbers.

Financed with a $202,744 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences Program, the two universities are in the first year of a two-year project to bring such a vision to life.

“The idea is that, because of their disability, it’s difficult for them to go out into the field,” says Don Stredney, OSC senior research scientist for biomedical applications and director of the center’s interface laboratory. “We looked at how we can use simulation and virtual technologies to emulate what it would be like to go there, and whether you could teach principles that you’re trying to convey about aspects of geosciences by doing it through a virtual environment.”

The project follows a $39,980 OEDG planning grant last year to design the research. Christopher Atchison, a former graduate research assistant at OSC and now part of the team as an assistant professor of geosciences education at Georgia State, received a separate $10,480 grant to cover involvement of students with mobility impairments during the planning grant work.

The team will use structural data obtained from the Cave Research Foundation and high-precision data collected by laser remote-sensing technology and high-resolution digital photography to build a virtual environment that mimics a typical field outing.  Later in the project, students will be placed in the various environments to test their effectiveness as a field learning tool.

A successful project might open up doors not just for those with physical disabilities, but for a wide range of people studying about and working in geosciences – or other fields. The oil and gas industry might be able to benefit from virtual technologies, Stredney says, as well mining personnel who need to know the structure of a place without going there in person.

“I don’t see any limits whatsoever.”

Source: Don Stredney, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and OSC Communications
Writer: Gene Monteith