Sarah Blazak

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Startup event highlights investment in region

By Sarah Blazak

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Architecture + Design

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April 24, 2012

Local startups raised nearly $67 million in seed- and venture-capital funding in 2011 – a 26 percent increase over 2010.  David Willbrand, a partner at Thompson Hine and chair of the firm’s Early Stage and Emerging Companies practice, will speak about the increase in startup activity and investment in the region at the Greater Cincinnati Venture Association’s State of Startup Investment luncheon, Wednesday, April 25.   The luncheon also will feature three short startup pitches, a keynote talk and a panel discussion by local investors on the state of startup investing in Greater Cincinnati. The event is being held from 11 a.m. until 1:45 p.m. at Mainstay Rock Bar, 301 W. Fifth St. More information and a link to register can be found here. A total of 29 startups received venture investments in Cincinnati last year. The majority – 41 percent – of deals made in Southwest Ohio last year were in information technology companies, including batterii, Blackbook HR, Define My Style, Ilesfay Technology Group and ThinkVine. The other leading category was health care/bioscience. One new health-care startup was Airway Therapeutics, a company based on 10 years of research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center that is developing proteins that significantly improve lung development in premature infants. Another was eMerge Health Solutions, which automates documentation during treatments at ambulatory surgery centers.  eMerge is a software-as-a-service provider. Other startup companies in this sector that received initial investments last year include SoMoLend, a social and mobile peer-to-peer lending technology. Balanced Insight, which provides business intelligence software to help other companies improve collaboration and productivity through intelligent data-driven decisions, received a follow-on round.  A trend that seems to be growing is investment in social-sharing startups – companies that provide content based on a user’s interests and location that the user in turn shares via his or her social networks. The three companies in this sector that received investment in 2011 were Girls Guide To, VenturePax and VenueAgent.  By Sarah Blazak 

Brandery accepting applications for next round

By Sarah Blazak

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Development News

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April 10, 2012

Cincinnati’s nationally recognized startup accelerator, The Brandery, is accepting applications for its 2012 class via its Web site. Applications are due May 15, and early-admission decisions will be made May 1. The 2012 class of 10 companies will be announced on June 1.  As a member of the Global Accelerator Network and named a top 10 accelerator by the Kellogg School of Management/Kauffman Fellows/Tech Cocktail rankings, the Brandery has graduated 14 companies in its first two classes. These companies have generated funding across the country from CincyTech, Crosslink Capital, Draper Associates and Transmedia Capital. The Brandery runs a four-month program in Cincinnati for startups that are consumer-focused and brand-driven. It will add several aspects to its program this year: • Brandsmiths. The Brandery will hire developers or designers who don’t have a specific startup idea but want to work for one. They will work full-time for a stipend with Brandery participants and may have the opportunity to join one of the startups. The application and additional information can be found here. • edSpark. The Brandery is soliciting applications for an education-focused startup. The Greater Cincinnati Foundation has funded a new initiative called edSpark to encourage educational innovation. Startups focused on education initiatives should apply through the standard channel.  • Office hours. For those looking for more information or advice before submitting an application, the Brandery is holding office hours from 5-7 p.m., Tuesday, April 3, at The Brandery office, 1411 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. Register for office hours. “The Brandery aims to give startups an unfair opportunity to succeed by leveraging Cincinnati’s regional strengths in marketing, branding and design and world-class companies such as P&G, Kroger, LPK, Nielsen and dunnhumby,” says Mike Bott, general manager of the Brandery, a position that was added this year. “Startups are attracted by the mentors and resources associated with The Brandery. We’ve already attracted applicants from six continents.”  The Brandery provides each company with $20,000 in seed money, training sessions with other entrepreneurs and industry experts, and networking with more than 50 mentors who work with startups to provide insights and help grow each idea into an investable, scalable product. Additionally, Cincinnati’s design agencies have donated their services to help each of the startups develop their branding and visual identity. The seed money that each company receives from The Brandery is now being provided by an award from the Ohio Third Frontier’s One Fund program for accelerators. For the first two years of the Brandery programs, CincyTech provided the $20,000 grants. Building upon a mentor list of industry leaders, The Brandery has recently welcomed Tim O’Shaughnessy of LivingSocial, Jonathon Triest of Ludlow Ventures, Bill Hildebolt of ExpoTV and Mike Brown Jr. of AOL Ventures. The 2012 session will begin July 2 and culminate Oct. 4 at Demo Day, where each Brandery company pitches its startup to a room of angel investors, venture capitalists, marketers and media. Last year’s Demo Day attracted more than 350 people to Great American Ball Park.   By Sarah Blazak 

Simple Registry recieves CincyTech funding

By Sarah Blazak

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Development News

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April 10, 2012

SimpleRegistry, a Web-based service that allows engaged couples, expectant parents and others to create a single gift registry that draws from endless retailers, has received a $150,000 investment from CincyTech as part of a larger seed-stage funding round.  The funding will help the company continue to develop a simple, enjoyable experience for consumers and to amplify public relations, advertising and marketing efforts in order to gain new members.  SimpleRegistry will focus on the wedding and baby industries, as research has shown that people use registries mostly for those life milestones. “Instead of having 100 items registered at a few different stores and being limited to only what those few have to offer, SimpleRegistry allows a couple or a mom-to-be to register 100 different items at 100 different stores on one registry,” says Tony Alexander, co-founder and CEO of SimpleRegistry. “They also can split expensive gifts into amounts they are more likely to receive. If you can take a picture of it and assign a monetary value to it, you can put it on your registry.” Alexander and two partners – Brandon Warner and Chris Kolik – launched SimpleRegistry in late 2010 and grew it to 3,000 members by the end of 2011, mostly through word of mouth.    The team already has launched one successful startup, Traveler’s Joy, an online honeymoon registry, which is eight years old.  “The success of Traveler’s Joy played into our decision to invest,” says Rahul Bawa, director of digital and software investments for CincyTech, who has worked closely with the SimpleRegistry team throughout the investment process.  “Alexander and Warner have experience creating a revenue-generating startup and know the industry well from their previous company," Bawa says. "Additionally, our research shows that more couples are moving to using the Internet exclusively to register for weddings and baby showers, with individual wedding registries averaging about $10,000 worth of goods.”   SimpleRegistry is CincyTech’s 32nd investment.  By Sarah Blazak 

Ilesfay receives interest, funding

By Sarah Blazak

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Education + Learning

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April 10, 2012

Ilesfay Technology Group LLC has closed an oversubscribed seed-stage investment round of $615,000, led by CincyTech with $250,000 and completed by Douglas Groh, Steve Turnbull and other private investors.  Ilesfay was founded in 2009 and provides real-time, cloud-based synchronization services through its proprietary PointToCloud™ and MatchMaking™ software. Ilesfay’s technology replaces the slower, expensive point-to-point system of replicating data by storing project information in the cloud and transferring only data that changes between sites.  Chris McLennan, James Taylor and Joe Kramer started Ilesfay with a combined 30 years of engineering experience. They had seen their clients at A&A struggle with information exchange while working on large projects. For example, teams of people around the world can be contributing to the same project. Every time a small change is made to an engineering design, the teams have to exchange huge amounts of data – measured in terabytes. (For a bit of context: One terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes. An average Blue-ray disc contains about 50 gigabytes). Right now companies transmit the data by leasing expensive fiber-optic lines or using virtual private networks (VPNs), which are not only also expensive but require a lot of manpower. Ilesfay uses a cloud-based service to replicate the data. Ilesfay aimed to raise a seed round of $500,000 but was met with such great interest that the round oversubscribed by $115,000.  “The oversubscription confirms our interest and eagerness for Ilesfay’s technology to come to market,” CincyTech senior investment analyst Justin Thompson says. “The company’s patent-pending technology could drastically improve the way that multi-nation companies exchange information. This software will be a key investment for PLM and vaulting companies.” Ilesfay has been piloting projects with Procter & Gamble since its formation.  By Sarah Blazak 

QI Healthcare helps hospitals improve quality

By Sarah Blazak

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Education + Learning

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March 6, 2012

The U.S. health-care industry is in great need of cost efficiencies and quality of care improvements, and a new company in Cincinnati is poised to help.  In 2010, as a country, we spent more than $2.6 trillion on health care but still ranked lower than most countries in terms of quality of care.  Also, new federal legislation will create incentives for hospitals and health-care facilities to meet quality standards and effectively punish those that don’t.  CincyTech’s newest portfolio company, QI Healthcare, is helping hospital meet and exceed these quality benchmarks.  The company was created from technology developed at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center by Dr. Frederick Ryckman, professor of surgery and senior vice president for Medical Operations at Cincinnati Children’s; Paul Yelton, senior application developer; and Candace Overly, project administrator, Perioperative Services.  What Cincinnati Children’s developed is called the Surgical Outcomes Collection System (SOCS). It’s a software application for use in hospitals and health-care facilities that aggregates data from a hospital’s various systems, including its Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system, to conduct institution-wide analyses of cases where quality of care could be improved.  “The real power of this software is in the ability to analyze every significant patient case,” says Ryckman. “Before SOCS we spent countless hours manually gathering data. SOCS improves the process through automation and enhanced analytics – and it frees up clinical resources to focus on quality improvement.” Leading QI’s efforts is experienced entrepreneur and health-tech executive John Atkinson. Before being named CEO of QI, Atkinson held leadership roles at WebMD, Mede America and SourceMedical. He is also co-founder of a successful mobile startup, BuzzVoice, a streaming audio news service for smartphones. CincyTech and Cincinnati Children’s Tomorrow Fund each invested $200,000. This round of funding will go toward sales, marketing and product development, which includes securing a handful of beta test sites for the SOCS software that has been in use at Cincinnati Children’s for more than a year.  By Sarah Blazak for CincyTech

Cincy Haus, Startup Bus ready to rock SXSW with ideas

By Sarah Blazak

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Entrepreneurship

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February 21, 2012

If you are one of dozens of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky residents heading to the Interactive portion of the huge South by Southwest festival in Austin next month, you’ll find a little bit of home when you get there.   Venture development group CincyTech has secured a #SxCincy Haus -- space in downtown Austin for members of the Cincinnati community to recharge themselves and their devices during the interactive portion of SxSW this year.   Four local digital pros will speak on panels. Krista Neher of Boot Camp Digital, Jeff Busdieker of Possible Worldwide, Marty Boyer of Possible Worldwide and Glenn Platt, professor of Interactive Studies at Miami University.   In addition, CincyTech, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber and the Greater Cincinnati Venture Association, in partnership with U.S. Bank in Cincinnati, is helping to sponsor a Startup Bus. Twenty-five to 30 software developers, Web designers and business development folks will ride the bus and work on startup company ideas, which they will pitch to judges in Austin. Find out more and register here: startupbus.com. Cincinnati is one of only 12 cities across the country hosting the national Startup Bus program.   In Austin each day of Interactive, CincyTech will host a #SxCincy Chat featuring a different digital expert from Cincinnati beginning at 4 pm at the #SxCincy Haus. The chats will take place after panels end and before parties begin each day and give SxSW attendees a chance to unwind while networking with other Cincinnati professionals.   #SxCincy Haus will be open from 8 am until 8 pm from Friday, March 9, through Monday, March 12. Participants can hang out, get work done, snack and rest up.   Additionally, CincyTech will host a #SxCincy Haus Party from 8-11 pm, Saturday, March 10, featuring Cincinnati beer and chili, music from Cincinnati bands and the opportunity to mingle with Cincy’s consumer, brand and marketing experts.   On the morning of March 11, founder and CEO of Cincinnati startup Venturepax will lead a kayak and standup paddle board outing on Austin’s Lady Bird Lake. Anyone interested in getting some fresh air should meet at the #SxCincy Haus at 10 am Sunday, March 11.   “We’re promoting Cincinnati as a city that understands the future of consumer interactive,” says Carolyn Pione Micheli, communications director for CincyTech. "We have a large number of innovative thinkers at huge corporations, digital agencies and startup companies. SxSW is a great audience with whom to share our story.” By Sarah Blazak

Design My Style gives teen girls product power

By Sarah Blazak

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Architecture + Design

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December 13, 2011

Inspired by three daughters, years of amazing experiences and invaluable relationships, DAAP graduate Kristine Sturgeon has set out to break down the culture of average for teen girls. Sturgeon’s startup, Define My Style, is a Web-based application that engages girls 13-19 years old in the design, sharing, advertising and purchasing of handbags. It allows young women to hone their creative skills while teaching them pertinent business lessons. “Define My Style is a healthy rebellion against mainstream sameness for young girls,” Sturgeon says. “Young girls should be curious, confident and have a strong voice. We’re building a platform for this with DMS based around everything I want for my own daughters.” CincyTech just announced it is leading a $690,000 seed-stage round in DMS with an investment of $250,000. DMS also received $100,000 from the Queen City Angels and $140,000 from Tech Coast Angels in Los Angeles. The remaining balance came from private individual investors. The company employs four people at its Mt. Auburn offices. Born in Tipp City, Ohio, Sturgeon moved to Cincinnati to study architecture at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP). Sturgeon credits her education there for giving her both business and creative abilities and sensibilities. Graduating in ’96 with a bachelor’s of architecture, Sturgeon has spent the better part of the last 15 years working in strategic marketing and communications out of Chicago. Her experience in creating customer value, mutually beneficial relationships and learning what consumers need and want has given her a great understanding of both the business process and consumer desires. The idea for DMS came to Sturgeon in autumn 2007, when her oldest daughter was getting ready to head back to school. Unable to decide on a school bag that gave her the functions she needed and was a design she loved, Sturgeon’s daughter was at a standstill. She knew exactly what she wanted out of a product – as most consumers do – but brands sold commercially weren’t interested in listening to her desires. Sturgeon saw a business opportunity. With a sketchbook and a PowerPoint, Sturgeon created the first DMS beta and tested it with 23 overachieving, involved, young girls. The test group included the daughters of powerful U.S. executives, two girls from China, two from London and one from Italy. It was evident the beta was a success when Sturgeon began hearing stories of how her product had inspired the young girls to be confident in the identity and designs. From that point forward, Sturgeon spent nights and weekends developing the web application, investing more than $320,000 of her own money into the company. Today, the DMS site has nearly reached 50,000 members and recently launched a new product line – laptop sleeves and cases. DMS is one of the first companies to establish the trend of individual branding with consumers wanting increasingly more control of their purchases in everything from handbags and shoes to cars and homes, says Sturgeon. “No one is allowing complete consumer design collaboration on the web, and especially not for teenage girls.” Define My Style is the 29th investment for CincyTech, a Cincinnati-based seed-stage investor focused on information technology, Web-based consumer services and life sciences/biotech companies. By Sarah Blazak

Startup Weekend at NKU builds new business

By Sarah Blazak

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Education + Learning

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December 6, 2011

Northern Kentucky is bringing a Startup Weekend to the region Jan. 13-15 at Northern Kentucky University’s Griffin Hall, organized by a collection of regional entrepreneurial advocates. Startup Weekend is a global, nonprofit organization that holds 54-hour events around the world for entrepreneurs, business professionals, creative professionals and programmers to meet, exchange ideas and build a company by the end of a weekend. The goal is for talented people with different skills to come together to make an idea come to life, says Rodney D’Souza, assistant professor in the Department of Management at the Haile/US Bank College of Business, and one of the key organizers of Startup Weekend. The weekend begins with an open-mic pitch, where individuals describe their business idea and start recruiting members for their team. Attendees vote for the best, most plausible ideas. Through Saturday and Sunday, teams develop business strategies, marketing plans and a simple product (usually Web-based) to present on Sunday night to a panel of respected local judges.   The development of the NKU College of Informatics was instrumental in bringing Startup Weekend to the region. The college came to life in the fall of 2011 with 1,550 students enrolled in the college’s programs that range from computer information technology to media informatics. The department is housed in NKU’s sleek new Griffin Hall, which boasts a 15-foot by 25-foot micro-tile presentation platform, 47 technology-enhanced meeting spaces and classrooms, a virtualization lab, an advanced audio and video lab and a computer hardware lab. “Startup Weekend will help advance the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Greater Cincinnati area by equipping the next generation of entrepreneurs with the necessary skills to transform their untested ideas into viable business ventures,” says D’Souza. “This will be accomplished by building teams around individual ideas, providing mentorship, encouraging networking and a lot of caffeine.” CincyTech is sponsoring the event and providing mentoring to attendees along with Candace Klein, founder and CEO of Bad Girl Ventures, Elizabeth Edwards, founder of Metro Innovation and author of Startup: The Complete Handbook for Launching a Company for Less, and Dave Heilmann, chief operating officer of Sparkpeople. Judges for the event are Casey Barach, president of the ezone, and Parag Rathi, an analyst with River Cities Capital Funds. Additional speakers, mentors and judges will be announced in the coming weeks. The program also is sponsored by Duke Energy, the Haile/US Bank Foundation, and the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. For more information or how to register, check the Startup Weekend Northern Kentucky website. By Sarah Blazak

Blackbook EMG partners with Best Upon Request to attract, retain talent

By Sarah Blazak

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Entrepreneurship

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November 1, 2011

Two Cincinnati-based companies have created a strategic partnership designed to help attract and retain top talent in Southwest Ohio. Blackbook EMG, a CincyTech portfolio and high-tech human resources services company, has paired up with Best Upon Request, a Montgomery-based corporate concierge firm. “We see Blackbook’s employee attraction and retention products as a natural extension of our current service offering,” says Tillie Hidalgo Lima, president and CEO of Best Upon Request.  “And our concierge services will bring additional value to Blackbook’s proposition.” Blackbook EMG connects recently hired employees to their new companies, communities and coworkers, allowing the employee to focus less on the adjustment and more on the quality of work produced. Best Upon Request is a concierge service companies hire to run daily errands for employees in order for them to be less distracted and more productive during the work day. Just like Blackbook, Best Upon Request provides a strong foundation for positive employee-employer relations. Since Best Upon Request already has a presence in 30 markets nationwide, Blackbook hopes to expand its services outside of Greater Cincinnati. “By leveraging the distinct strengths of Blackbook and Best Upon Request, this relationship allows us to obtain synergies among client needs and to strategically grow both companies. We look forward to working with Tillie’s team,” says Myrita Craig, president of Blackbook. Blackbook has seen strong momentum in 2011, increasing staff, tripling revenue and building key clients, including Procter & Gamble, Macy’s, KAO Brands, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Tri-Health and more. Chris Ostoich, CEO and founder of Blackbook, said the Best Upon Request deal includes an undisclosed investment amount. Along with private investors and a $400,000 investment from CincyTech as lead investor, Blackbook will close its funding round at $700,000, allowing the company to complete technology enhancements and expand into other markets. “This has been an exciting year of growth for Blackbook, and this alliance with Best Upon Request supports that in a very strategic way,” Ostoich says. “This sets the stage for taking Blackbook to the next level.” By Sarah Blazak for CincyTech

Bioscience matches made in heaven, via local labs

By Sarah Blazak

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Health + Wellness

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October 4, 2011

Jan Rosenbaum creates bioscience matches made in heaven. As an executive-in-residence with Cincinnati-based seed-stage investor CincyTech, Rosenbaum matches up physicians with medical-device engineers, therapeutics companies with molecular pharmacologists, and diagnostics makers with target markets. Rosenbaum’s role is to look for opportunities to create companies – or commercialize research – out of health care and biotechnology work being done at local research institutions. For the last 12 months, that work has included three trips to Israel to form connections with its dynamic and prolific medical research and biotechnology industries. Rosenbaum’s work comes as the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber makes a big push to create strong business relationships with Israel. A delegation of about 30 business leaders led by the Chamber traveled to Israel last November to learn how the Israelis fund, promote and advance high-tech startups. Rosenbaum’s trips have provided a deeper dive into medical technology and biotech. Among other things, she has found a potential distributor for a CincyTech portfolio company’s product and helped form a medical device development and commercialization program between Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Ben Gurion University in Israel. She also has helped create a collaboration with a medicinal chemistry company based in Israel. The goal is to further develop compounds that have been identified by one of Children's leading oncology researchers, who has taken a novel approach in the treatment of leukemia and Crohn's disease. “All of these are examples of opportunities that lead to economic development in both Israel and Cincinnati through creation of startup companies, driven by the attraction of Cincinnati Children’s,” says Rosenbaum. “The impetus for relocation to our region occurs once the company reaches the point of needing clinical development, market penetration, and sales and marketing distribution through a U.S. presence.” Rick Schottenstein, the managing director for the state of Ohio’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office in Tel Aviv, calls Rosenbaum “an extraordinary asset to the state”. “It takes someone of Jan’s caliber to analyze these very sophisticated opportunities,” he says. “She has the business background and the scientific background to do that.” A native of Buffalo, New York, Rosenbaum came to Cincinnati in 1986 after a post-doc fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine doing cardiovascular research and clinical pharmacology. For 23 years, she worked as a principal scientist at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, evaluating licensing opportunities, helping to take internal research to the marketplace, and conducting and coordinating internal and external pre-clinical research. Since joining CincyTech in January 2009, Rosenbaum has worked closely with Nicole Robinson, executive director of the Center for Technology Commercialization at Cincinnati Children’s, and Dr. Dorothy Air, associate vice president of entrepreneurial affairs and technology commercialization at the University of Cincinnati. Rosenbaum delves into research underway at both institutions and pairs researchers and opportunities with strategic partners. She has been instrumental in the formation of a number of CincyTech client companies, including Airway Therapeutics, which is based on 10 years of research at Cincinnati Children’s and will develop surfactant proteins to help premature infants’ lung development; and CardioCeption, a University of Cincinnati spinout that is creating non-traumatic heart therapies. In Israel, Rosenbaum finds cultural affinity as well as professional affinity: prolific researchers aggressively looking for Ohio expertise on taking products to market. “They are hungry to create and eager to innovate,” she says. “It is an extremely entrepreneurial culture. I absolutely love the work we are doing there.” By Sarah Blazak for CincyTech