Capital Success

There is a network of organizations in Northeast Ohio working together to help high-growth entrepreneurs succeed, and in 2007 the numbers show the network did a great job.

The region's entrepreneurs last year raised $318 million from investors -- twice the amount raised in 2006.

The following is from a news release regarding the findings of the 2007 Venture Capital Report, which was paid for by the Fund for Our Economic Future:

“Seed investments are critical to the formation and growth of new companies in an innovation economy,” said Ray Leach, President and CEO of JumpStart Inc. "The increased rate of investment at the seed level is encouraging news. We need to continue to encourage the support of current activities that focus on this segment as well as the creation of new and expanded angel, seed and early‐stage funds to ensure that we maintain capital in NEO that has the appropriate appetite for risk at the earliest stages of company formation and development.”

One of the initiatives of Advance Northeast Ohio is to encourage the region's foundations and organizations with large endowments to allocate a portion of their investment portfolio to early-stage investment funds that target companies in the region. As this report shows, there's an increasing number of attractive companies in the region in which to invest. Now comes the hard work of keeping the investment and deal flow going. Organizations working to get the job done include:

The business incubators of NEOinc; JumpStart, BioEnterprise, TechLift, NorTech and MAGNET.