Innovation + Job News

Riding a bicycle can be dangerous, especially when people increase their likelihood of injury with two habits:
 
• Not wearing a helmet
• Listening to music with earbuds
 
Bipo solves both of those problems.
 
By locking earbuds into the vents of a helmet, the music that plays through the tiny speakers creates non-distracting background noise. As a result, the tunes are not blasted directly into your eardrums, making you much more perceptive of potential peril on the road.
 
The device does not require you to alter your helmet in any way, and the earbuds are easily removed once your ride is through. Bipo is a simple, ingenious way to safely enjoy music while cycling.
 
Developed by Noel Gauthier of The Launch Werks, a member of the Losantiville Design Collective, Bipo was first developed as a personal life-hack.

“The prototype was something I used for myself,” Gauthier says. “ But people kept asking me about it.”

After mulling it over, Gauthier decided to capitalize on his creation and began to seriously design Bipo with his business partner, Matt Anthony. This resulted in a six-month creation phase, where the duo worked on the schematics and conceptualization in between other projects.

Gauthier found the best way to convince cyclists of Bipo’s merits was to simply let them try it. Every response seemed to be positive. Not loud enough to be a distraction, the Bipo enables earbuds to produce abundant audio for ideal biking enjoyment.  

Gauthier later realized he had unintentionally made a device that not only enables cyclists a safe means of hearing music, but also encourages more consistent helmet use. Guilty, like many cyclists, of not wearing his helmet every ride, there was an audible difference without his Bipo. Gauthier says, on the occasions he’d forget his helmet, “I’d be halfway down the road and think to myself, ‘Why is it so quiet?’”
 
By Sean Peters

SafeCare, which provides continuous monitoring and background checks of employees in the healthcare industry, received a $25,000 grant in November from the Innovation Fund. The money will help SafeCare expand and refocus the company, which was formed out of Bizdom Cleveland’s inaugural class in April 2012.

The grant will allow SafeCare to concentrate more on the B2B market, rather than the consumer market. The company monitors employees on a monthly basis against nationwide healthcare and criminal public data sources.

“We will be using that money to really concentrate on flushing out our B2B offerings,” explains SafeCare founder and CEO Lissette Rivera. “We’re moving away from consumer products because of the sticky situations you can have when you share people’s information.”
 
SafeCare is in the process of re-designing their website to create a more personal feel. “We’re focused on providers rather than families, and our website will have a more warm and fuzzy feel,” Rivera says. The new website should launch by the end of this month.
 
SafeCare has three clients spanning nine healthcare facilities. Rivera has grown the company to four employees -- a CTO, two contract employees and a paid intern -- and is hoping to hire a salesperson in the next six months. “We’re fast moving in the direction of creating more and more jobs,” boasts Rivera.

 
Source: Lissette Rivera
Writer: Karin Connelly

In 2012, Northeast Ohio was a popular place for venture capitalists and angel investors to back startup companies. Investments nationally decreased by 10 percent last year, and decreased in the rest of Ohio by 33 percent, according to a study in The MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
 
But in Northeast Ohio, according to the Northeast Ohio Venture Capital Advisory Task Force, 105 tech-based companies in Greater Cleveland raised $201 million from venture capitalists and angel investors -- a 34-percent increase over the amount raised by companies in 2011.
 
“We’ve been on an upward trajectory of the number of companies that have been able to raise money,” says Samantha Fryberger, vice president of marketing for JumpStart. “There’s a strong angel community here and our angels are well organized and well educated.”
 
In fact, Northeast Ohio has the first and fifth largest angel funds in the country. Fryberger says the diversity of businesses and the number of support organizations attract investors to Northeast Ohio. 
 
“We have a very robust early-stage investment ecosystem right here in Northeast Ohio,” says Clay Rankin, managing member of the North Coast Angel Fund, which invests in life sciences companies and is the country’s fifth largest angel group. “We’ve been building a lot of momentum in the last six to eight years. We’ve been very fortunate in supporting early stage ventures.”
 
Citing successful companies like Juventas Therapeutics, Cleveland HeartLab and Neuros Medical, Rankin says it’s no wonder Cleveland is growing in investments. “There really are world class companies being developed right here in our backyard,” he says. “When you have world class companies, you attract support from angel groups.”

 
Source: Samantha Fryberger and Clay Rankin
Writer: Karin Connelly

A frantic search for a unique photo gift for his sister lead Jared Gibbons and two friends to create a company that provides them.

“My friends and I had printed Instagram photos, but it was a difficult,” he recalls. “Plus, square images were hard to come by. With the standard photo print size of four by six inches, two inches had to be cut off. I wanted to send some four-inch-by-four-inch  family photos to my sister as a special gift for her next do-it-yourself project. After much googling, however, I couldn’t find a simple printing option that offered quality square prints that size.”
 
Seizing an opportunity, Gibbons and his friends, who live in Columbus, established Snapstagram. The company specializes in quality square prints. “We currently offer two products – classic prints and our Printbox,” he explains. “Our four-by-four classic prints come in rolls of 12 and are printed on luster-finish, archival-quality photo paper. Our Printbox is a museum-quality eight-by-eight canvas print of a photo placed inside a wooden box frame.”
 
Snapstagram partners with a local Columbus printing lab that has decades of experience, he says. “They still use many of the old-school printing techniques that make our photos stand out from the rest.”

The company only prints photos from Instagram. In the first nine months of its existence, Snapstagram sent more than 60,000 prints all over the world. Gibbons personally packages and ships all orders.

A few months ago, the company launched a funding campaign through Kickstarter to raise $3,000. After 30 days, they had raised well over $14,000 with nearly 1,000 backers. According to Gibbons, they were riding the wave of Instagram’s popularity. “Instagram was approaching its second year in existance, and the popularity of the app was increasing exponentially,” he explains. “We were offering Instagram users a simple way to get quality prints of their photos.”
 
The company consists of Gibbons, his two founding partners and one employee. “We have some competitors, but they mostly focus on fun things like calendars, books and iPhone cases,” he notes. He adds that the company is looking at other platforms from which to print and has some “signficant new things” coming in 2013.
 
 
Source:  Jarod Gibbons, Snapstagram
Writer:    Lynne Meyer
 
 
 
 
 

How do you start a startup for people starting startups?
 
If you’re Christian Deuber, founder of Launch Farm, you pull together a large group of seasoned entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs, entrepreneur wannabees, entrepreneurial college students, local companies that offer services to entrepreneurs, and angel investors and establish a new organization named Columbus Startups.
 
Think of it as a huge spider web cast over Columbus to integrate all things entrepreneurial.
 
Columbus Startups is based at Launch Farm, Deuber’s marketing, public relations and social media marketing agency. “The mission of Columbus Startups is to create and actively aggregate fresh, ever-changing information and insights focused on empowering the local startup scene,” he explains.

The organization is aimed at entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the Columbus startup scene; startups looking for fresh talent, potential partners and investors; and investors looking for innovative startups to fund.

“Columbus Startups offers a multimedia complement to other sources of entrepreneurial collaboration in town,” Deuber says. “Our purpose is to elevate the local startup scene to a larger national stage. An initial goal is to increase both the speed and quality of connections in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. We want to benefit multiple target audiences.”
 
While Columbus Startups has its own monthly meetings, participants are active in a host of other activities and groups within the local entrepreneurial scene. The organization’s website has become a significant source of information on startup happenings, with real-time reporting and updates from these local events. It also features information about tools to help startups, including apps, blogs and books, as well as a list of local business services, ranging from marketing and web design to legal services and funding sources, geared to the needs of startups.
 
Deuber is also beta testing what he calls Startup Genome on the website. “Startup Genome is a web-based tool that enables local startup communities to collect, aggregate and display their city’s data any way they want,” he explains.
 
There’s currently no fee to be involved in Columbus Startups, and, according to Deuber, more than 100 people are participating in the new organization.

Source:  Christian Deuber, Columbus Startups
Writer:  Lynne Meyer

yet2, an open innovation services provider, has opened a new office in Columbus. The Needham, Massachusetts-founded company specializes in generating strategic technology partnerships with companies worldwide.
 
Bruce Heinrich, Director of Account Management in Columbus, says Ohio’s businesses are prime for open innovation, a process of matching two companies with different needs and capabilities to create a new product efficiently and affordably. He adds that yet2 selected the city of Columbus because of its central location. “I can easily be in my car and travel to Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo and Cleveland in one to two hours.” They’re also next door to their partners at the statehouse, Ohio Third Frontier and Ohio Department of Development.
 
Heinrich says since the Ohio Third Frontier chose yet2 to deliver open innovation services they are assisting with marketing yet2’s offerings to Ohio-based companies. “The state chose a third party company to market and set up six forums around the state to educate mid market companies about the benefits and practice of open innovation,” he explains, noting that yet2 will be invited to attend these forums.
 
Since opening in December, yet2 has several companies that are utilizing their search services and expects to add many more in due course. “One of the companies that we’re working with right now is looking to create a new product category and had a need for a technology they could not develop internally,” Heinrich explains. “This product represents a huge market opportunity that would fuel growth in Ohio operations.”
 
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that has the potential of connecting Ohio companies with international businesses to speed their time to market at a cheaper cost than working internally. Heinrich provides a hypothetical, saying “If it takes nine months or a year for the open innovation process rather than two to four years to do the [research and development], do all the testing themselves and launch the product, then it will save them money and make the product more profitable in the long run.”
 
In the end, it’s all about creating jobs and growth in Ohio as yet2 continues to hit the ground running. “You can expect to see a lot more of us out there as we begin to build relationships across the state, proactively seeking customers,” Heinrich notes. “And hopefully hear some success stories and case stories of what’s happening.”
 
 
Source: Bruce Heinrich
Writer: Joe Baur

Major regional job-creating organizations have come together to focus efforts on competing for one of the nation's fastest-growing job segments: information technology.

This collaboration includes the Cincinnati CIO Roundtable, a forum of IT leaders who are focused on improving the region’s overall IT ecosystem, along with the Cincinnati USA Partnership and the Partners for a Competitive Workforce.

The CIO Roundtable is led by co-chairs Piyush Singh, SVP & CIO of Great American Insurance, and Geoff Smith, former IT leader at P&G.

"Business leaders in the region are coming together with the common goal of talking about the importance of IT, and its role in the growth of their companies," says Tammy Riddle, IT economic development director for Cincinnati USA Partnership.

Just last week, the organizations came together for a half-day, invitation-only event —“Grow the IT economy in Cincinnati USA.” The event featured presentations from a variety of stakeholders, including the organizers, JobsOhio and CincyTech.

The group is working to meet a wide range of challenges, including creating high-paying jobs through public and private partnerships, creating a strategic plan to grow IT jobs in the region, attracting and training talent, and determining the role of startups.

"One of the key things we're going to focus on are trends that companies are seeing across the board, and how we can match those with Cincinnati strengths and build the street cred of the IT sector in Cincinnati," Riddle says.

Regional universities also play a role in talent creation. Northern Kentucky University's College of Informatics is a leader, as is the University of Cincinnati with its top-rated analytics graduate program, and the University of Miami's innovative digital media program.

Cincinnati has an emerging IT industry. There are about 30,000 Cincinnati residents who are employed in the IT sector, which has an estimated $2.5 billion impact on the country’s GDP. According to the 2020 jobs outlook, it’s also one of the four fastest-growing and best-paying employment sectors in Cincinnati, with an anticipated 10-year growth rate of 26.5 percent.

"We want to take a more proactive approach to growing jobs in this sector," Riddle says. "We want to make sure that our region has what we need to fill that demand, to be able to accomplish growth."

Next, participants will start working on what it takes to grow the IT sector, including conducting a comprehensive assessment of the current IT economy and developing strategies for talent attraction, greater awareness investment and startup activity.

By Feoshia H. Davis
Follow Feoshia on Twitter

This story was originally published in Soapbox, hiVelocity's sister publication in Cincinnati.

What started as a design project in CWRU mechanical and aerospace engineering student Kristen Brouwer’s senior design class has evolved into a full-blown business. Brouwer and three of her classmates took an existing patent for a regenerative braking flywheel and created FlyDrive, which makes a flywheel that replaces the battery in electric and hybrid cars. They are bringing their flywheel to market.

“In a Prius, for instance, when you brake, the electric motors are charged, which then charge the battery,” says Brouwer. “With our flywheel, it’s just as efficient in returning energy and doesn’t have to be replaced. And it’s environmentally better than batteries because it doesn’t use chemicals.”
 
Brouwer and teammates Jordan Lajoie, Luke Voigt, Kris Bosma and Cleveland Institute of Art industrial design student Adam Lauser have been developing the flywheel for market since September. “Most of our developments have stemmed from market identification and development as well as creating a preliminary concept for implementing the flywheel in a transportation system,” says Brouwer.

FlyDrive will be competing in the Ohio Clean Energy Challenge semi-finals next week, where they will compete for $10,000 and the chance to move on the Midwest regional competition in Chicago. The company has been assessing licensing options in the meantime.

“We’re waiting to see if we make it to the next level of competition,” says Brouwer. “It’s been a great learning experience.”


Source: Kristen Brouwer
Writer: Karin Connelly

This story was originally published in Fresh Water Cleveland, hiVelocity's sister publication in Northeast Ohio.

Phil Alexander and Mohit Ahluwalia realized something when they were earning their MBAs at CWRU: that people in all segments of businesses are charged with creating presentations at some point in their careers. However, not everyone has the talent -- or budget to hire an agency -- to create an eye-catching presentation.

“Thirty million PowerPoint presentations are made every day across America,” says Alexander.
 
So Alexander and Ahluwalia thought about starting a business that would help customers create their presentations.

“We wanted to do something with digital media,” recalls Alexander. “We were looking to figure out if we could automate the process and avoid paying the high rates of agencies.”
 
The two applied to LaunchHouse Accelerator last summer and developed Quick2Launch, a company that creates great visuals for any presentation. The company officially launched last week with its ConceptDrop technology.
 
With the company’s ConceptDrop, users login, upload their content outlines and fill out a creative brief questionnaire describing their presentation. They are then presented with a selection of pre-approved templates and themes, and Quick2Launch takes it from there and creates the visuals to go along with the content. The end result is a complete, professional presentation.
 
“We’re just trying to hold their hand throughout the creation of the presentation,” says Alexander. “We’ve tried to make it so it’s really simple.”
 
Quick2Launch partners with Reality Premedia Services, which provides access to 150 graphic designers. The company is about a month away from launching its business-to-business platform.
 
Alexander says they hope to hire a sales team and in-house designers soon. “The goal is to completely build our own entity,” he says. “We really want to be the all-in-one stop for presentations.”

 
Source: Phil Alexander
Writer: Karin Connelly

This story was originally published in Fresh Water Cleveland, hiVelocity's sister publication in Northeast Ohio.

What began as a game and website development company in 1996 has blossomed into a thriving developer of software products.

After creating internal software that allowed UrbanCode to track the progress of its own software development projects, the company began developing similar products for its customers. UrbanCode products help their customers get their software to production faster -- decreasing time to market and ultimately getting their technology to the end users quickly and easily.
 
“One trait that unites all our customers is that they realize the strategic importance of their technology,” says Maciej Zawadzki, UrbanCode cofounder and CEO. “They need to get their technology into the hands of end users as quickly as possible. Our products facilitate the adoption of Agile methodologies in development and DevOps practices in operations."
 
Last year, UrbanCode was a finalist for Tech Company of the Year in NEOSA’s Best of Tech Awards, and its AnthillPro product won Best Software Product, Impact in 2008.
 
By recognizing their clients’ needs, UrbanCode has been growing by leaps and bounds. “Recently, we have been focused on DevOps releasing three new products: uDeploy, uBuild and uRelease,” says Tracy Gavlak, UrbanCode’s office manager. “We have been able to increase our growth rate to 70 percent over the last two years, with no signs of slowing down.”
 
UrbanCode has grown from 25 employees to 55 in the past year. Gavlak cites finding the right talent as one of the company’s biggest challenges. The company is currently recruiting sales engineers, field sales executives and software developers.

“We have the energy and informal atmosphere of a start-up, with the customers and financial security of a much larger firm” says Gavlak.
 
Company officials expect to double in size again this year. Plans are underway to move to a larger space in the Halle Building later this year.

 
Source: Maciej Zawadzki and Tracy Gavlak
Writer: Karin Connelly

This story was originally published in Fresh Water Cleveland, hiVelocity's sister publication in Northeast Ohio.

Big, established brands can get stale, so in the fast-changing and hyper-competitive consumer products market, rapid, results-oriented market research is a real asset for large brands.

Olivetree Research in Hyde Park builds on founder Carol Shea's decades of experience in consumer marketing research to help brands shake things up a little. Olivetree helps find new answers to the perennial question: What do consumers REALLY want?

Shea started Olivetree Research about 11 years ago, not long after Sept. 11, 2001.

"It was the right time for me to make a split from my former company," she says. "I'd been in marketing research for 25 years, and had been thinking about starting my own business for a long time. Sept. 11 was a wake-up call for living every day the way you want."

Additionally, Shea served as adjunct faculty of the Williams College of Business at Xavier University as a former member of the Advisory Council to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Olivetree works with large and mid-size local firms that are looking to solve marketing and sales challenges that stunt growth.

"We're working with companies that are committed to positioning new product development that meets the needs of their consumers," Shea says. "We work with companies who want to spend time up-front on research, understand what positioning is and are willing to engage in that process."

Through her work, Shea has helped brand everything from pickles to neighborhoods, all by finding what customers want and what the company needs to do to market and meet those needs.

Companies often come to her when their marketing efforts are flagging, they have a decline in sales or a new competitor enters the market. With Olivetree, companies look to strengthen their brand, reinforce customer loyalty, expand into new markets or develop new products and services.

The market research process takes about three to six months, and can continue over years as a company evolves. In addition to consumer products, Shea often works with healthcare and financial services agencies.

This year, Shea is growing her own business by starting an online training company that will offer courses for new market researchers.

"It will help them understand what techniques work best in certain situations," she says. "The training will help them have confidence in their position. It can be very difficult for someone new in market research to speak with authority on how you should proceed based on the (research) results."

Shea plans to launch the new company sometime later this year.

By Feoshia H. Davis
Follow Feoshia on Twitter

This story was originally published in Soapbox, hiVelocity's sister publication in Cincinnati.

JumpStart recently invested $250,000 in Guided Interventions, a startup company that has developed technology to assess coronary artery blockages. The company was formed two years ago and has been mainly focused on developing its intellectual property and proof of concepts, says Guided Interventions CEO Matthew Pollman.

“The concept is revolutionary,” Pollman says. “It uses a pressurized guideline to measure fractional flow reserve (FFR). It facilitates assessing blockages in the coronary artery and determines whether to perform an intervention.”
 
Pollman cites a clinical study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that showed using technologies like Guided Interventions’ FFR product instead of traditional angiogram indicate that 37 percent of the time the blockage should be left alone. “Sometimes leaving it alone is actually the best thing for patients,” he says.
 
Pollman plans to use the JumpStart investment to build out operations at GLIDE and the SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems at Lorain County Community College.
 
The money will also allow the company to hire as many as six employees in the next two years, in particular engineers, and then triple or even quadruple the number of employees in the next three to five years. Currently, Pollman and his partner, Reinhard Warnking, are the only two employees.
 
Pollman, who is in the process of moving to Northeast Ohio from California, says he is looking forward to moving to a region that is so supportive of startup biotechnology companies and research.

 
Source: Matthew Pollman
Writer: Karin Connelly

Butterfly wings are beautiful and delicate. They’re also very slippery.
 
That characteristic has fascinated researchers at The Ohio State University and inspired them to study the properties of butterfly wing surfaces for insights into developing new high-tech coatings.
 
“Butterflies’ wings must remain clean in their natural habitat in order for them to maintain flight control and structural coloration,” explains Bharat Bhushan, Ohio Eminent Scholar. “They aren’t able to clean their wings like other insects, so they must rely entirely on the self-cleaning properties of their wings. Such properties are a result of superhydrophobility – the ability of a surface to repel water -- and low adhesion, which are desirable for low drag.”
 
According to Howard Winbigler, professor of mechanical engineering at OSU, “Reduced drag is desirable for industry, whether you’re trying to move a few drops of blood through a nano-channel or millions of gallons of crude oil through a pipeline. And self-cleaning surfaces would be useful for medical equipment – such as catheters, or anything that might harbor bacteria.”

The researchers have zeroed in on one butterfly in particular – the South American Blue Morpho Didius – due to its relatively large size, which will enable them to develop larger-scale replica samples.

“Our goal is to create the butterfly wing effect onto flexible adhesive-backed sheets that could be applied to a variety of flat and curved surfaces,” Bhushan explains. “The sheets would require the addition of nanoparticles or a low-surface energy chemical layer.” He anticipates successful development of prototype sheets this spring. 
 
The applications for high-tech coatings developed through this technique include medical, marine and industrial products that could save lives, energy and money, Bhushan notes.
 
The researchers’ work is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

Source:  Bharat Bhushan, The Ohio State University
                Howard D. Winbigler, The Ohio State University
Writer:     Lynne Meyer

After considering several potential renewable energy sources -- including wind, solar and biomass -- to power its main campus, OSU recently decided to go with wind energy from Iberdrola Renewables’ Blue Creek Wind Farm in Ohio’s Paulding and Van Wert counties.

Once it settled on wind as an energy source, the school established three qualifying criteria for a supplier, Scott Potter, senior energy advisor, OSU’s Office of Energy and Environment, explains. “The wind energy had to be in Ohio, there had to be sufficient capacity available to cover a significant portion of our campus load and the energy had to be priced competitively.”
 
The university’s decision was in response to three principle functions – operations, academics and research, he notes.
 
“It was imperative that the energy company selected would serve our academic and research missions. Iberdrola Renewables demonstrated its commitment to higher education with the donation of a number of meteorological research towers and associated equipment. Two of these towers are already installed and collecting data as part of a research project led by one of our leading wind research experts and his students.”

According to Potter, wind energy is one of the most comprehensive areas of energy research at OSU. The school has researchers focused on wind modeling; turbine, gear and blade design; noise abatement; blade coatings; ecological issues and energy policy. Faculty and students engaged in wind research and education are in several colleges, including the College of Engineering; the College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences; the John Glenn School of Public Affairs; and Fisher College of Business.
 
Based on current rates, price comparisons and projected energy use, OSU estimates it will save approximately $930,000 over the next 12 months with the new wind energy source.
 
Source:  Scott Potter, The Ohio State University
Writer:    Lynne Meyer

Nonprofit venture development organization JumpStart has awarded $250,000 to Guided Interventions, a medical startup that will call the Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE) in Elyria home.
 
The grant will go toward Guided Interventions’ project to commercialize a new product that uses pressure sensors to better assess the physiological impact of coronary artery blockages at a more affordable cost. Cardiologist and CEO, Dr. Matthew Pollman, says the funding was the “tipping point” for their decision to locate in Northeast Ohio.
 
“The support from JumpStart was absolutely critical,” says Pollman. “The reward provides us with the opportunity to quickly take our company to the next level of growth.”
 
Pollman now turns to Ohio after co-founding a medical device company in the San Francisco Bay area in 2008, CV Ingenuity. During a period of economic duress across the country, Pollman found a more supportive environment for entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio. He notes, “The contrasts with Northeast Ohio couldn’t be more stark.”
 
Once CV Ingenuity was acquired by Covidien earlier this month, Pollman took the opportunity to return to his childhood state where he has served as a member of the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center’s advisory board in Cleveland since 2007. He sees tremendous promise in the state of Ohio’s entrepreneurial and innovation community.
 
“I have witnessed first hand how proactive the state of Ohio has been in promoting and supporting the build out of a critical mass of technical talent and infrastructure to foster and nurture technology development companies at all stages of their growth.”
 
 
Source: Dr. Matthew Pollman
Writer: Joe Baur