Cincinnati : Innovation + Startup News

For many listeners, the best album sounds like a live performance, which sits perfectly well with Jacob Tippey of Ramshackle Recordings.

Tippey believes a song sounds best when recorded with limited interference—spared from a gang of overdubbed and mutated parts that can bury its soul. His work hearkens back to recording's early days, when one-take tracks were necessities because of limited technology and materials. 

“I believe in using the resources you have,” says Tippey, who views himself as a documentarian. 

He works to ensure clients record in the best possible setting for their sound. That could mean adjusting sound-absorbent panels to soak up or reflect the music in the walls of the Curtis, Inc., audio studio, or taking the client to the altar room of an 1800s church, the space he also calls home, to allow for a blooming natural reverb.

So far, Ramshackle Recordings has put down tracks with SHADOWRAPTR, The Happy Maladies and Till Plains. 

By foregoing the luxury of heavily altered and modified tracks, Tippey simplifies the recording process.

By Sean Peters

SocialPoint is a new web-based service that combines major forms of social media into one feed. Users can control what services they’re accessing with simple clicks, which helps make the management of personal profiles much simpler.

Created in Cincinnati, SocialPoint was developed by a local team of techies who wanted to make the social media experience more efficient.

“We found that we were spending a lot of time every day checking in with our friends on all our various social media sites, and that we needed a solution for ourselves, so we developed SocialPoint.Me,” says Chris Burnett, SocialPoint’s vice president of marketing.

SocialPoint makes it very easy to navigate between different profiles on connected accounts, which still provide the standard features offered by the original sites. For example, if you wanted to check your Facebook account, SocialPoint gives you the option to filter specific categories. If you are just interested in seeing photos uploaded by your friends, you’d select the preset on the easy-to-navigate sidebar. Your search can be as specific as you want. Plus, you're still able to chat with your Facebook friends with SocialPoint. 

Similar features are also available for Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, FourSquare and AT&T.

While most social media apps are aimed at business owners who are more interested in tidying up their “online estates,” SocialPoint is intended for personal users who want to continue sharing and keeping up with friends in the many ways the expanding idea of “social media” allows.

A mobile app will soon be available, along with an early summer update with additional social media customization options.

SocialPoint’s office is in the heart of downtown, and all of their funding comes from Chicago West Pullman LLC, which is headquartered at 600 Vine Street. 

By Sean Peters

Grupo Xela is a marketing research agency that specializes in Hispanic demographics. Founded by Jose Cuesta in 2003, the company found success in Cincinnati by communicating an authentic and carefully researched Hispanic perspective to Procter & Gamble and QFact, among other locally owned businesses.

Originally from Colombia, Cuesta earned a BA in industrial engineering at Javeriana University. He came to Cincinnati in 1998, where he earned an MBA from Xavier University. Cuesta’s mother is originally from Cincinnati, and he was prompted by his family to move to the Queen City.

“You don’t go to Cincinnati unless you have a reason,” Cuesta says. “But there’s always a reason to go.”

After earning his degree from Xavier, Cuesta began working for Cincinnati Bell as a manager for various departments.

Cuesta founded what would eventually become Grupo Xela with his brother-in-law. Their first business attempt was as coffee distributors for regional restaurants, but their work in the city helped them realize the Hispanic community’s marketing potential. Prompted by the fact that Hispanics were the most rapidly growing minority in the country, Cuesta knew he could offer a very important perspective to P&G—Cincinnati’s powerhouse corporation.

By interacting with Hispanic panelists sourced from Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Indianapolis, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami, Grupo Xela’s chief concern is gathering qualitative market research.

The company has since gone international, with a United States' headquarters in Cincinnati, and a Colombian office in Bogota, with plans to expand into more cities and countries soon. 

By Sean Peters

Another Northern Kentucky manufacturing facility is expanding. Balluff Inc., an international supplier and manufacturer of sensing devices, just broke ground on a new headquarters in Independence. It's the company's third expansion in 30 years.

The German-owned Balluff currently employes 150 people in Northern Kentucky, and expects to add 24 new jobs and invest $6 million as part of the expansion. Balluff specializes in products for industrial sensing, networking and identification devices.

Balluff's customers are manufacturers who are working to increase efficiencies through automating processes. Many are automakers, with increasing demand from emerging industries in renewable energy like solar and wind. The steadily improving strength of U.S. manufacturing is driving company growth, says Balluff President Kent Howard.

The company has been hiring on a regular basis, around 15 people per year. Balluff expanded previously in 1994 and 2001.

"Manufacturing in this country is coming back strong, and the manufacturers that are successful are the ones that are using automation to improve productivity," Howard says.

The Independence facility in Northern Kentucky Industrial Park is the final assembly, distribution and training site for Balluff in the U.S.

Balluff’s new 48,000-square-foot building is set to be finished next spring. It will include customer support, training and a sales and marketing center. The facility will include “green concepts” and worker-friendly features, such as 100 percent employee access to daylight from workspaces. Bluff’s current 60,000-square-foot space will accommodate more space for manufacturing.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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As our aging population grows, they're asking more of our healthcare providers.

Nurses increasingly are being asked to fill healthcare needs and are growing their skills and knowledge through higher education. Still, an untapped resource of nursing talent remains: men.

About 94 percent of nurses are women, and that creates challenges for men who are entering the field, as well as patients who aren't always comfortable receiving treatment from a male nurse.

These are some of the reasons that local medical and educational partners, including a University of Cincinnati College of Nursing student organization, started MENtorship, a program for male student nurses.

The nursing program has partnered with Cincinnati Children's Medical Center and UC Medical Center to develop MENtorship.

The six-to-eight week program is just wrapping up, with a group of 12 undergraduate nursing students. In addition to being mentored by professional nurses, higher ranking students also mentor younger students. So students are both mentors and mentees, says UC MENtorship faculty advisor Gordon Gillespie.

"The junior and senior mentors can tell the freshmen and sophomores what the student nursing program is really like and the commitment that it takes, so the students aren't surprised," says Gillespie, who has been a nurse for 17 years. "They could be less likely to drop out."

The program was initially inspired by a 2013 American Journal of Nursing article, "Men in Nursing: Understanding the Challenges Men Face Working in this Predominantly Female Profession,” that identified professional tribulations experienced by men in the nursing field.

Students are mentored on educational challenges and expectations, but also on dealing with challenges they'll face after school, Gillespie says.

"How do you approach intimate care for a female patient?" he says. "There are higher concerns about inappropriate touching with a male nurse. There are some cultures where it is taboo. When there are violent or aggressive patients, they were automatically assigned to me because I am the man. We talk about those issues and how to deal with them."

The MENtorship program will be evaluated this year, and there are plans to offer it again based on feedback from this semester's participants. If given board approval, it will be offered for a full year starting with the 2013-2014 academic year.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Xavier University graduate Matthew Dooley started his company, Dooley Media, in 2011. And on March 18, Dooley made his first full-time hire, Kirsten Lecky, whose focus is on client management.
 
Dooley Media specializes in all things social media, from strategy development and execution to measurement and education. It brings together some of the best and most creative minds in graphic design, development, copywriting and videography to work on social media campaigns.
 
“Our goal is to take what companies already do well and bring it online to shareable platforms that extend the reach and impact of their brands,” Dooley says.
 
After graduating from college, Dooley was a social media strategist for a local insurance company. As time went on, Dooley’s interest in social media grew, as did his client list, which he was managing on top of his insurance job and a course he teaches at XU about social media. After five years, he decided to take a leap of faith and start his own business.
 
Dooley Media works with both small businesses and Fortune 500 companies.

“While larger companies are blazing trails and have great success stories about using social media, smaller companies are underserved,” says Dooley. “They’re the ones that need the most help when it comes to social media. They don’t have the technical know-how or the money to invest in a social media strategist. It’s a unique opportunity for us to service them.”
 
Dooley comes from a family of entrepreneurs—his aunt and uncle both own businesses in Cincinnati, and his uncle was actually his first client back in 2010. And Dooley isn’t a stranger to starting businesses: He and his twin sister opened Flix, a DVD rental at XU, during their undergraduate years. He’s also part of nugg-it, a Cincinnati-based startup that is working on a wearable tech device that records “nuggets” of conversations, which will launch later this year.
 
“Dooley Media’s goal is to serve local businesses and optimize the conversations of those businesses, which will allow them to compete on a level playing field with larger companies,” Dooley says.
 
Dooley Media dabbles in all types of social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, blogging, etc. But the platform differs from client to client, depending on the audience they’re trying to reach, says Dooley.
 
And when Dooley Media sends out proposals to potential clients, they do something a little out of the ordinary. “One of my friends does cakes, and we send along a customized cake with the company’s logo and the phrase ‘Life is sweeter with Dooley Media,’” Dooley says.

To him, it’s a way to get the conversation started, and puts the ball in the client’s court.
 
By Caitlin Koenig
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How does a dietician with a tendency toward the macabre end up creating sometimes shocking illustrations for local and national bands? Through a combination of nightmare-chasing exercises and a desire to break out of her routines.

Cait Pantano, who graduated from Miami University in Ohio, is now keeping busy illustrating her take on moments of extreme mental and physical sensation. Some are sexual; others show debilitating pain. No matter the topic, Pantano’s art reflects her observations in dark and often comedic drawings of the human body.

Her inspiration comes from a very personal space. “I have nightmares almost every other night,” Pantano says. So she took one recurring stress dream--one during which she loses all of her teeth--and drew the image to get it out of her head. “I don’t think I’ve had that dream again.”

Encouraged by her friends to share her work, Pantano's humorous and macabre sensibilities were met with enthusiasm when she she began uploading images of her illustrations to Tumblr. Soon, musicians began commissioning her to create their album art. Recent clients include Cincinnati's The Pinstripes and Wisconsin-based Daniel and the Lion.

By Sean Peters

A new water quality monitoring app developed at Northern Kentucky University caught the attention of national ecologists and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for its potential to strengthen the quality of data collection at local waterways.

NKU is quickly building on that success with funding from the NKU Research Foundation. The foundation recently awarded the NKU's Center for Applied Informatics $10,000 for two students to develop field-based water quality applications.

"The NKURF board is very excited about the further development of tools like the water quality app and associated data storage," NKU Associate Provost for Research, Graduate Studies and Regional Stewardship and Chair of the NKURF, Jan Hillard, said in an announcement. "The entire process of creating and sustaining this application ties together values of undergraduate research, creativity, collaboration and community engagement."

NKU's latest mobile application, Water Quality, allows users to more efficiently log and identify water quality data from rivers, lakes and streams. It also features a digital field guide for identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates and a Pollution Tolerance Index calculator.

Water Quality was unveiled before a national audience at the Technology to Empower Citizen Scientists conference held at NKU last month. Developed by a team from NKU and the Foundation for Ohio River Education, the $4.99 app is currently available for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch in the App Store.

"We are excited that this mobile technology can be used by scientists and students alike to learn about and monitor rivers, lakes and streams across our region," says Dr. Steve Kerlin, director of the NKU Center for Environmental Education.

With this new funding, students will help develop apps like Water Quality through the Center for Applied Informatics' Virtual Co-Op program. This program allows students to build their resumes through hands-on work experience that applies what they learn in the classroom.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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During their careers as professional makeup artists, eventual best friends and colleagues Niki Mcclanahan and Megan Kelly felt their industry was straying too far from its roots.

"We felt it was becoming more about how much product you could sell," Mcclanahan says. "It was getting away from being fun and creative, and helping people find a look they never thought they could achieve."

She and Kelly joked off and on for a few years about striking out on their own, but by last spring, the joke became serious. After careful research and planning, they started Blink makeup studio. The freelance makeup artists have a shop in Northside International Airport, an eclectic retail, arts and entertainment space.

Blink sells its own line of handmade soaps, shower gels, lotions, bath bombs and essential oils. The shop also features an essential oil bar.

"We started from scratch, and did a lot of research on how essential oils and natural oils work," says Mcclanahan. "If a customer comes in to our oil bar, we can mix a custom blend right in front of them."

Among their most popular products is a brown sugar lip scrub. "People have really started using it all over their bodies because it's a very gentle exfoliant," she says.

Blink has recently expanded into the founder's first love—makeup. They've worked with an outside company to develop Blink's artistry makeup line. They're starting out small, offering products for eyes, lips and cheeks.

For their more environmentally-conscious clients, Blink offers mineral-based eyeshadows, a line they plan to expand.

Cincinnati is taking notice of Blink. It's was recently featured in CityBeat's 2013 Best of Cincinnati issue and in Cincinnati Magazine's Bridal Buzz blog.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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RentShare, an online service that allows tenants to pay their rents online, is set to become a standard for the global home rental industry.

Started largely with support from The Brandery, RentShare's Manhattan-based entrepreneurs came to Cincinnati to benefit from the area's powerful startup community. RentShare, only a burgeoning idea when it entered the Queen City, has emerged as a functioning business that was ready to change how people pay their rent.

Any tenant with Internet access can use RentShare. The service allows renters to simply split rent payments, along with bills and expenses (including house cleaning services in the future), with roommates. By helping to eliminate one of the most common frustrations among people who share apartments or houses, RentShare is designed to help irritated roommates who are sick of absentee payers or passive-aggressive notes left on their refrigerators.

In addition, since rental payments are the only use of paper checks for many people, RentShare helps to eliminate the hassle of having another type of payment option available for only one bill. By automatically sending your landlord a check in the mail, with a detailed status report of which tenants’ payment is accounted for, there is no change for the landlord, who doesn’t even need to be notified directly that renters have opted to use RentShare.

RentShare founders Ian Halpern, Christopher Toppino and Trevor Geis focused on catering to tenants, rather than the landlords. In fact, landlords are not required to register for the service, as long as the necessary information is supplied by the renters.

By Sean Peters

Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls introduced a motion that could change the way residents and businesses pay for powering their spaces with solar energy.

She says the benefits are two-fold: increasing the demand for solar panel manufacturing and lowering the city's reliance on fossil fuels.

This plan is one of several energy-saving initiatives introduced since City Council adopted the Green Cincinnati Plan in 2008. That plan included a goal of one in every five Cincinnati buildings incorporating rooftop panels fueled by solar power by 2028.

"There's an emerging solar manufacturing sector here, and we would be creating a financing mechanism that would allow the demand to emerge for solar energy," Qualls says. "It's not a viable option for many property owners right now."

Qualls introduced a measure that directs the city to look into working with local environmental organizations like Green Umbrella, the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance and the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority to help create a Property Assisted Clean Energy, or PACE, financing program.

PACE programs is a public/private initiative that are enabled by legislatures in nearly three dozen states across the country—including Ohio—which help business and homeowners pay for energy upgrades to existing buildings. Typically, participating property owners can finance those upgrades as a property tax assessment for up to 20 years.

"It's tax neutral, promotes 'going green' and reduces our carbon footprint," Qualls says.

The city has used the property tax assessment mechanism before for property owners who have been responsible for other large fixes, Qualls says.

"It has been done to pay for costly repairs over time—that's the same principle PACE follows," she says.

Ohio passed its PACE law in 2009. In 2012, the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority issued the first PACE bonds in Ohio for a project to upgrade the City of Toledo’s municipal buildings.

Cincinnati must pass its own legislation for a local PACE program. Quall's motion directs the administration to bring the legislation back to Council within 60 days.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Novak Consulting Group was started on a dare.

Egged on by her husband and friends, Julia Novak felt compelled to earnestly pursue starting her own consulting business for leaders in government and non-profit communities. She began her solo venture at home, and has since hired staff around the country and progressed to working out of the Hamilton County Business Center. There, her consulting firm continues to serve clients all over the country.

While consulting with governments and nonprofits in public works, public safety, human resources, finance, planning and IT sectors, Novak Consulting Group aims to service more fields than other firms by working with a skilled team whose members offer a broad range of expertise.

With a background in city management, Novak has found success serving local governments across the United States. Having her own Cincinnati-certified small business has allowed her to take her talents to different types of clients. But her emphasis is in personalized service that suits each situation’s needs.

Expanding the office to the HCBC means dedicated meeting and collaboration space as well as increased support from other local ventures and small business advocates.

By Sean Peters

On April 12, Platform 53 is hosting a “jelly” for those interested in coworking. A “jelly” is a temporary coworking event that Platform 53 plans to host every two weeks.
 
Adam Dean launched Platform 53 in January 2012 at Northern Kentucky University’s Startup Weekend—but under the name 3C-Coworks. At the time, Dean was an intern at Bad Girl Ventures, and he saw a need for a coworking space in Covington. He partnered with Stacy Kessler, an ex-P&Ger whose background is in consumer understanding and strategy, and the name was eventually changed.
 
The name references the railroad and the impact it had on the area. The “53” refers to 1853, which is the year the Covington train station at Eighth and Russell was built. Platform 53 also symbolizes the role the group wants to play in the community, by being a platform upon which people can build their businesses.
 
“I was used to a traditional office setting and office resources, but then I started working at home and out of coffee shops, and I realized I needed something different,” Kessler says.
 
About 30 percent of the private workforce in the United States works independently, Dean says. “We want to create a network of opportunity in the area and be a hub for independent workers.”
 
Dean and Kessler have a vision for Platform 53’s physical workspace, which they’re hoping to secure by the end of April. They want to have an open work environment with a combination of phone booth rooms, meeting rooms and conference rooms, plus flexible desk options or dedicated office space for those that wish to have their own offices.
 
“We want to make people feel at home, and have a platform to celebrate successes and make announcements,” Dean says.
 
Platform 53 is for entrepreneurs, small businesses, independent workers and those with flexible work arrangements who want to run and grow their businesses and connect with others.
 
“To me, coworking is about ‘accelerated serendipity,’” Dean says. “You might not know what you need, but you’ll eventually see the opportunity by being around others.”
 
Currently, Dean and Kessler have had about 75 people show interest in Platform 53. And the group isn’t just tech-focused. “The magic happens when you bring together people from different walks of life,” Kessler says.
 
They’re looking for different skill sets but shared values among members.
 
“We want to be part of the startup corridor,” says Kessler. “The Brandery and Cintrifuse are in Over-the-Rhine, and UpTech and Platform 53 are here in Covington—we’re like bookends that connect the region.”
 
By Caitlin Koenig
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Yes, blockbuster video game releases get all the buzz and rake in a lot of money, but the tried-and-true board game still has a following. And it's even made a mini resurgence in the past decade.

Some of the best-selling modern board games, including Ticket to Ride and Dominion, feature compelling back-stories, are fast-paced and require strategic thinking.

Just in time for summer, a Cincinnati board game developer with a track record of success is working to get his latest game, Family Vacation, on retail shelves. Philip duBarry, with the backing of Jolly Roger Games, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the game's production.

Children and adults alike can play Family Vacation, a game where each player takes their family to various cities and attractions across the United States and racks up or loses happiness points through travel experiences (including chances for bonus points). The player with the most points at the end of the vacation earns the title of "Vacation Master." You can see a video will a complete explanation of the game here.

"Family Vacation is a lighter, more casual sort of game," duBarry says. "It takes about an hour to play." DuBarry previously designed Revolution! by Steve Jackson Games, Kingdom of Solomon by Minion Games and Courtier by AEG.

So far, the Kickstarter campaign has raised about one-fourth of its $12,000 goal.

When he's not creating games, duBarry is a children's pastor at Addyston Baptist Church. He has a B. A. in elementary education from Middle Tennessee State University, and has lived in the Cincinnati area for the past 13 years.

He began designing games as a hobby in 2007, when he created Revolution! and sold a few dozen on the Internet.

"Then Phil Reed of Steve Jackson Games bought one and asked if I'd thought of publishing the game," he says. It was the end of a hobby and the start of a side job.

"I've thought about starting my own company, but really my favorite part of this is designing and making games, so that is what I'm sticking to," duBarry says.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Applied Decision Science is a field-based research and development company that specializes in the the study and development of new ways to improve decision-making in high stress situations.

Founded by Steve Wolf, along with Laura Militello and Dr. Gary Klein—two authorities in the fields of human cognition and the budding study of naturalistic decision-making—Applied Decision Science is dedicated to improving the choices made by people in arduous situations (medics, soldiers, firefighters, etc).

By obtaining their data firsthand from the field and by interviewing pertinent subjects, Applied Decision Science can create protocol applications that enhance the chances of successful and beneficial decisions. This is a distinct difference from lab-based research, which separates the researcher from the core of their study.

While their military work is confidential, the work the company has done for the healthcare sector continues to enhance peoples’ lives. Their most recent efforts for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention involve an application that helps healthcare providers identify patients at a higher risk of colorectal cancer, one of the deadliest iterations of the disease.     

Rooted in Wolf’s work of studying the potential for enhanced decision-making, and coupled with Dr. Militello and Klein’s expertise, Applied Decision Science was started largely thanks to the Hamilton County Development Company in Norwood. Through the business incubator, Applied Decision Science has overcome many of the struggles similarly sized startups encounter.

By Sean Peters