Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, has been writing about "Rust Belt" startups as part of an ongoing series called "Startup Nation."

In a feature titled, "A Framed First Dollar for the Internet Age," he writes about SparkBase, a Cleveland-based loyalty, gift, and reward card processor.

"SparkBase is a nice success story," he writes. "They've been hiring like crazy in Cleveland, particularly in the last year and a half and are up to 50 people working out of their new offices. They're one of several middleware vendors in the retail space that are emerging to collect and analyze retail data."

The title, by the way, is a reference to SparkBase's conference table, which instead of displaying the company's first dollar earned features the mother boards from their first servers.

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