There are cans of
Orange Crush, Mountain Dew, and Hoist on the table: green-bottled beers with labels worried away are held in hand, with cups of coffee, bottles of water and at least one Red Stripe, sitting empty. Just as diverse as the choice in beverages are the professional backgrounds assembled in the Sycamore Street office of The Creative Department, as the weekend-long development session for Secret Cincinnati enters its seventy-second hour.
Secret Cincinnati looks to make the city a better, more enjoyable place by creating an online community and database that collects and
shares the best underpublicized
discounts, events and places from around the city. Rallying around egalitarian themes -
Discover, Participate, Connect - the group's goal is to put the power of information in the hands of citizens, and stepping back to watch them wield it. But this one weekend could serve an even larger purpose locally. Secret Cincinnati could be yet another asset inspiring professional entrepreneurs and giving them the tools to succeed here.
Joe Pantuso is one such entrepreneur, having come to Cincinnati to start a programming company called
NeoWorx, and now, eleven years later, co-organizing the Secret Cincinnati session. Asked about his motivation, he says, "I see things in the world and I want to fix them. It's all the same spirit. I feel like I need to do all I can for Cincinnati." To drive Secret Cincinnati, Pantuso teamed with Chris Ostoich, a UC alum originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who founded
Blackbook Experience Management Group. In itself, their partnership expresses its very goal: bringing people together to support entrepreneurship locally.
"You've got an engaged group of people around one purpose," Ostoich says of Secret Cincinnati, "And [these projects are] successful because of the impact in the community."
In some ways, the website itself may even be an ancillary point. Observing the Secret Cincinnati team work, one quickly notices the volume of questions being asked, and the way answers come from all directions. Often, these conversations occur between participants working for small businesses with limited stake in each others' success - if not businesses in outright competition with each other. According to Ostoich and Pantuso, getting the best and the brightest together to exchange knowledge through "group-share" is crucial to Cincinnati's vibrancy. They hope that a more fertile place to start businesses emerges as the happy by-product of what was presumably just an exciting project with an interesting group of people.
Drew McKenzie of
The Creative Department served as a digital strategist for Secret Cincinnati and was quick to tout that diversity of talent as a primary reason for spending an entire weekend working on a start-up that provides no direct revenue stream to himself or his company. Weekend participants included Josh Heuser of
Ionic Collective, a brand integration and production agency, and Keara Schwartz of
Share Some Sugar, among others.
"It's the cast of people," McKenzie explains. "People from P&G, other start-ups, transplants. It's just a really unique mix of talent. Just a really cool group of people."
One of those people is Rodney Williams, a Procter & Gamble employee who relocated to Cincinnati just eight months ago. While he contributed the perspective of a marketer and Queen City transplant, he says he got a lot back from the weekend experience, even as someone working for a multi-billion dollar international company.
"I want to always be connected with the people doing start-ups," Williams says. "That's the heartbeat of the city. You can't be innovative in a corporate setting without those connections." According to the former Washington, DC resident, increased connectivity offers value to everyone, regardless of whether or not they are personally involved in a start-up. Simply put, he says, "It's a catalyst."
The Pantuso-Ostoich team were also the catalysts to bring
Ignite - the local "franchise" of a speaker series growing across the country and newly front and center in the local group-share movement - to Cincinnati. Started in Seattle in 2006, Ignite describes itself with the tagline "Enlighten us, but make it quick," a reference to its format: speakers are backed by twenty slides that automatically advance every fifteen seconds, allowing them five minutes to make their point. The first Cincinnati session debuted on January 20, 2010 at Know Theatre and saw one presentation spun off into an op-ed published in the Enquirer. The second session featured talks that were a mix of pure entertainment, such as P.G. Sittinfeld's "The Happiest Person You Know" which described the traits of happy people, as well as more pitch-driven presentations including Candace Klein's "Bad Girl Ventures."
Klein saw
IgniteCincinnati as an ideal platform from which to launch Bad Girl, her micro lending not-for-profit that will connect local female-led start-ups with the financial support they need. Despite working with local initiatives such as
CincyPAC and
Agenda 360, the lawyer from Graydon Head had no reason to think that a start-up was in her future until she came in contact with the entrepreneurial evangelism of Ostoich and Pantuso.
"I never saw myself as an entrepreneur." Klein says. "I was a starter of causes. But then I met Joe and Chris and it's not just getting people who are starting companies, but people who see needs in the community." Within a week of presenting at Ignite, Klein notes, "I've been contacted by over 250 people with start-up ideas."
In much the same way that the Secret Cincinnati incubator was able to find technical and business solutions by bringing together unlikely partners, Ostoich believes that
Bad Girl Ventures is a prime example of the vital service Ignite provides by introducing causes to the partners they need but might have difficulty finding.
"The venture capital community is one of [Cincinnati's] hidden gems," Ostoich points out. "We need to cut a clearer path for creatives to bring their ideas to market. And I want to be a part of that." Still, he believes that Ignite talks - as well as Secret Cincinnati - can strengthen the Queen City simply by providing access to interesting social opportunities.
"An affinity for the event is going to lead to an affinity for the place we're in," Ostoich says.
For Pantuso, the most encouraging element of both Secret Cincinnati and Ignite might be that while the goals are broad and aimed at a better overall city, there can still be a direct payoff for the individual, thanks to a perfect storm of local characteristics.
"There's such a deep talent pool. We've got strong companies here that develop people's skills. It's big enough to have resources, but small enough for your voice to be heard," Pantuso says.
Ostoich says that by giving the individual an outlet for that voice, and the resources to pursue one's passions here, Cincinnati is better positioned to cultivate the unique talents that can put a city on the map.
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