Running late for a business meeting at the local coffee shop? Not going to make it to happy hour with your friends? Prezto eases the guilt by allowing the user to instantly send a cup of coffee, cocktail or even a cupcake to the person on the other end awaiting your arrival.
 
“The app allows you to give a gift to a friend remotely and immediately,” explains Anne Jiao, founder of Prezto. “It’s a way to share spontaneous moments on a daily basis.”
 
The concept is simple: Users download the app, select a participating establishment and gift to give, and then send it to a friend. The friend simply presents a code for scanning and receives the gift.
 
Jiao came up with the idea for Prezto after working in Los Angeles. “I noticed that most of my bosses hosted meetings outside the office and there was a lot of anxiety around getting to the right place at the right time,” she says. “I thought, what’s an easy way to get a meeting off on the right foot?”
 
She also reluctantly admits that a scene in the Hunger Games movie, in which the character Katniss received medication through a teleport device to win the game, also helped spark the idea. “It’s the idea of people who are not there being able to affect a person’s life,” she says.
 
Jiao went through the LaunchHouse Accelerator program last fall to hash out her idea for Prezto and still keeps an office there (in addition to coffee shops and a rented desk downtown). She employs a CTO and an intern and is looking for a second intern. She also uses five developers on a contract basis.
 
About 40 merchants already have expressed interest in Prezto, mostly in the Coventry, University Circle and Cleveland State areas. The app is in beta testing now and Jiao plans to use her interns to sign on more merchants before the app officially launches this summer.

 
Source: Anne Jiao
Writer: Karin Connelly

Dan Young, owner of DXY Solutions, has been a busy man. The mobile app developer has hired additional staff, opened West Coast and international offices and is expanding his company's breadth of capabilities. “We started off as a mobile company,” explains Young. “Mobile apps are very popular, but we’re looking to put mobile technology in the palm of the user’s hand. We’re looking at design and connectivity to the user’s environment.”

One area where DXY has thrived is in the medical field. For instance, the company designed an interactive iPad application for the Cleveland Clinic to better assess concussions. The app works with sensor devices to provide more accurate and comprehensive information than solely relying on human observation.
 
Young also is developing apps that interact with home automation devices and interactive android-based kiosks to help with way finding on large hospital campuses. “Users can walk up to the kiosk and they are directed where they need to go,” Young says. “We’ll be ready to deliver to clients this summer.”
 
To facilitate all these projects, DYX opened offices in Seattle and Berlin and brought on seven new employees, bringing the total to 23, 20 of whom are in DXY’s new Ohio City offices. Kate Hawk, who was brought on as marketing manager last summer, moved to Seattle to oversee business out west.
 
The Berlin office came out of a group of interactive designers Young employs there. “Berlin is the hot technology scene right now in Europe,” notes Young. “Last year was quite a bit of growth. It’s been stressful, but it’s been a fun ride.”
 
The coming year is shaping up to be just as exciting. DXY will launch an interactive web site for the Akron Public Schools in February, is launching this spring a new version of its virtual historical tour guide Curatescape, and will continue to grow its relationships in the medical community.

 
Source: Dan Young
Writer: Karin Connelly

Amber Pompeii and her husband, Michael George, both Cleveland natives, spent the last couple of years in Seattle. While most people think of Seattle as a coffee hotspot, Pompeii discovered something different: tea. While working for Remedy Teas in Seattle, Pompeii saw that there’s a whole different mind-set in a tea shop than a coffee shop.

“Most of the time people walk into a coffee shop and it’s go, go, go, with a lot of carry out,” Pompeii says. “Tea is about taking time out of your day.”
 
Pompeii and George moved back to Cleveland eight months ago because they missed the city and wanted to bring the tea experience to Hingetown. They are on track to open Cleveland Tea Revival February 1. “It will be exactly like a coffee shop, where you go in and sit down, but we focus on tea, not coffee,” Pompeii says. “I love tea and there are not a lot of great places to buy tea in Cleveland.”
 
Cleveland Tea Revival will feature 50 organic teas, from white to black, as well as pu-erh, a fermented tea. Customers can enjoy a pot of tea in the café, take a cup to go, buy tea leaves or learn about the benefits of drinking tea. “We will focus on pure teas, that way you get a lot of natural flavors – buttery, flowery flavors with enzymes that help with digestion.” Pompeii currently is looking for local sources for pastries and plans to source locally for blending ingredients.
 
Pompeii went through the Bad Girl Ventures Fall 2013 business program and received a $25,000 loan from ECDI to help start Cleveland Tea Revival. While Pompeii and George are the only two employees right now, Pompeii says they plan to hire at least two people this year as the café gets off the ground.

 
Source: Amber Pompeii
Writer: Karin Connelly

When Addisah Sherwood-Ajiboye and her husband, A. Bolu Ajiboye, wanted to introduce their three-year-old to science and math, they were surprised by the lack of age-appropriate activities.

While parents often concentrate on early reading skills, they often don’t focus on science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM -- skills, Sherwood-Ajiboye says. “Eighty-five percent of brain development happens before the age of five,” she explains. “Too often, math and science instruction is overlooked by parents. Studies show that children introduced to STEM educational resources at a young age perform better in science and math than those who are not.”
 
So Sherwood-Ajiboye, a former teacher, and her husband, a neuroscientist and engineering professor at CWRU, started STEMpowerkids to introduce science and math to kids aged three to seven years old. Sherwood-Ajiboye works with three early childhood education experts to develop a STEM curriculum designed for preschool and kindergarten children.
 
“Our all-inclusive kit is designed to be both fun and educational,” Sherwood-Ajiboye says. “Our mission is to empower children in STEM by promoting their interest and abilities with fun experiential learning activities at home.” The “bite-sized” lesson plans can be tweaked for different ages and include hands-on projects. Activities include making a potato battery and building a film-canister rocket.
 
Right now STEMpowerkids is in beta phase, selling subscriptions at a discount. When the company officially launches at the Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. in April, subscriptions will sell for $29.95 per month, which includes shipping.
 
STEMpowerkids won a $25,000 loan from Bad Girl Ventures in December and is currently looking for first-round investors. Sherwood-Ajiboye also is searching for a business accelerator or incubator program.

 
Source: Adissah Sherwood-Ajiboye
Writer: Karin Connelly

As an investor in Biolectrics, a company that makes a battery-powered mouthpiece – think sports mouth guard -- that treats periodontal diseases with electric stimulation, Paul Ruflin began thinking about the device’s potential in other applications.
 
“The mouthpiece delivers a small amount of current that kills oral bacteria,” Ruflin explains. “In the lab it kills 75 to 100 percent of bacteria in the mouth in five to 10 minutes. The early results are promising in killing oral bacteria.”
 
With human trials completed at the University of Buffalo, Ruflin has created Animal Oralectrics, based out of MAGNET’s offices. The company uses the same technology as Biolectrics but applies it toward dogs, sheep, cows and cats. “Animals are five percent more likely to have periodontal disease than humans,” says Ruflin. “Less than one percent of dog owners brush their dogs’ teeth or takes them to the vet for a cleaning.”
 
Ruflin recently created a prototype on a 3D printer and is working with Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine to test Animal Oralectrics on dogs. So far, the response has been positive. “This device kills oral bacteria, prevents gingivitis and gum loss,” explains Ruflin. “The current is undetectable. The concept here is to make a device that gives treatment but looks like a chew toy or pull toy. You can even put a treat in the end of it. The key is getting them to engage with it for five to 15 minutes.”
 
The Innovation Fund recently awarded Animal Oralectrics a $25,000 grant to further develop its product. Currently, the company consists of just Ruflin and an intern from CWRU. But he plans to hire a marketing and social media person soon. He also plans on running a crowd funding campaign before releasing the product in of 2014.
 
Ultimately, Ruflin predicts he will add seven to 10 direct employees and another 15 to 20 indirect employees over the next two or three years.

 
Source: Paul Ruflin
Writer: Karin Connelly

When Craig Lewis, a mechanical science and engineering major at CWRU, was given an extra credit assignment in 2011 to come up with something that would increase household energy efficiency, he started thinking about how much water people use in the shower.

“We did a little preliminary research to see if people could track their water consumption in the shower,” Lewis recalls. “We found that 76 percent of people we surveyed had no idea what their water consumption was.”
 
So Lewis and his partners, Andrew Schad and CJ Valle, set out to create a shower head that tracks water consumption. “How can you be efficient if you don’t know what you’re consuming,” asks Lewis. The result is Sprav, a company that makes a water meter by the same name for the shower. Today’s model is wireless and works with the users’ mobile devices to provide usage data. It takes seconds to install and requires no tools.
 
Sprav entered Case's St. Gobain Design Competition in the fall of 2011 with a prototype and came in second place. Listening to feedback from the judges and the audience, Lewis and his team redesigned the meter, making it sleeker and with more functionality, and proceeded to take top honors at the following year's competition.
 
Sprav ran a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. While they fell short of their fundraising goal, the company enrolled in Bizdom’s fall class. “It’s been a great opportunity,” Lewis says of Bizdom. “They’ve done a great job of guiding us along the path.” The company has also turned to Blackstone Launchpad for guidance and resources.
 
Lewis has taken a year off from school to work on Sprav full-time. While the device is still in development, the company has an agreement with CWRU to test it in the dorms in 2014. While Lewis calls Sprav a “grass roots effort” right now, he has his sights set on getting Sprav in big box stores like Walmart and Home Depot, “where people expect to buy these types of things.”

 
Source: Craig Lewis
Writer: Karin Connelly

Two years ago, after a 17-year career as a communications consultant with some of the area’s larger human resources firms, Denise Reynolds decided she wanted to put a little color in her job. So after she was laid off from her last position, she launched Outside the Lines Creative Group (OTL), a company that uses cartoons to convey company messages.

“I wanted to take all of my knowledge about benefits, wellness, policies and procedures and make it fun,” she says of her newfound venture. “I thought, this stuff is so boring. If only we’d put cartoons with it, people would actually read it.”
 
So she recruited nationally syndicated cartoonist Jenny Campbell to illustrate Reynolds’ HR messages. Reynolds uses humor and illustrations to communicate sometimes not-so-exciting subject matter, like dress codes and employee safety rules. “Companies love it,” she says. “And employees think it’s great.”
 
Currently, OTL has about 20 clients, ranging from Jergens Industrial Supply to the Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. In fact, finding clients hasn’t been too hard, says Reynolds. “You have to find clients who want to do something innovative."
 
Jergens liked Reynolds’ campaign so much they asked that the cartoon characters be painted on the plant’s machinery. “Companies try everything to get the attention of employees, but they haven’t tried cartoons yet,” says Reynolds. The Cuyahoga Valley National Park hired OTL to create a children’s educational activity book featuring a river otter. The book won an international award and the otter has been made into a plush stuffed animal.
 
In fact, OTL won five international awards in two competitions in 2013 for its work on projects for Akron Children’s Hospital, ACRT, Jergens Industrial Supply and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
 
OTL recently was awarded a $5,000 loan from Bad Girl Ventures, which Reynolds plans to use to update her website and post some work samples. She also plans on hiring a second cartoonist.

 
Source: Denise Reynolds
Writer: Karin Connelly

When remodeling a kitchen, people usually rely on friends for advice on contractors and architects. Brides use websites and friends as resources when planning their wedding. Entrepreneurs Brian Verne and Mike Eppich figured: Why not create a place where athletes can get advice on apparel?

So Verne and Eppich created Phenom, a mobile app where athletes can brag about the apparel and equipment they use to train. “Influences have a place,” says Verne. “Athletes are concerned with how they look and the products they are using.”
 
Phenom is designed to give amateur athletes a leg up on the decisions they make.
 
“Phenom connects athletes with the best gear, equipment and training opportunities based on what their peers are using right now,” says Verne. “From buying a new product to vetting a trainer, camp or combine, Phenom will become the easiest way for athletes to get the inspiration, advice, product information and professional reviews they need to win.”
 
Verne describes Phenom as “an app to promote your style and your hustle.” Users create a digital profile in a virtual locker to share what they like and are using. “The virtual locker has information on how they’re using that stuff, where they’re using it and how they’re training and competing,” explains Verne.
 
After first starting a successful performance apparel company, Verne and Eppich decided they needed to expand their vision. “We wanted an app that had a heartbeat, to capture things in real time – people getting ready to train and wanting to compare equipment,” says Eppich. “The whole idea is to see an athlete’s day or athletic career in every single segment, from the training they do to their post-workout after the game.”
 
Verne and Eppich have seven part-time employees in New York, a vice president of finance in Boston and are planning on hiring two to three full time developers in their Cleveland headquarters. On January 7, the two will head to New York to pitch Phenom to investors in First Growth Venture Network’s SecondGrowth.
 
To build awareness of the app, Phenom recently hosted an open house during a soft launch at their downtown Cleveland offices.

 
Source: Brian Verne and Mike Eppich
Writer: Karin Connelly

Researchers and hospitals literally can accumulate rooms full of paperwork documenting a single clinical trial. Rick Arlow offers a better method of document management without all that paper. RegulatoryBinder is an early stage software company focused on document management for medical clinic trials.
 
Arlow, who was earning a dual M.D. and Ph.D. a year ago, observed how much paper was wasted in clinical trials, came up with the idea to go paperless. So he quit his studies, formed RegulatoryBinder and joined accelerator FlashStarts in PlayhouseSquare.
 
“I have a tool that allows hospitals to store clinical trial data electronically,” explains Arlow. “Up until now, researchers would store paper in three-ring binders. There were literally rooms of paper.”
 
RegulatoryBinder’s Enterprise Document Management software provides up to a 33 percent increase in documentation productivity while standardizing the documentation system and saving researchers money. The biggest challenge Arlow encountered in developing a system of electronic records for clinical trials was efficiency and adoption.
 
“The large issue is, how do you do this in an efficient manner and still be compliant,” explains Arlow. “We had to find a way to provide the software, training and services and get people to adopt it.”
 
RegulatoryBinder is being used in pilot programs at University Hospitals and a number of other sites. Arlow says that so far people have been quick to adopt the technology.
 
RegulatoryBinder was one of six Northeast Ohio start-up companies to receive $25,000 from Lorain County Community College Foundation’s Innovation Fund. Arlow also recently received follow-on funding from FlashStarts. He plans to use the money to hire staff in customer support, marketing and sales, and to promote RegulatoryBinder to more markets. Arlow hired his first employee this month and plans to hire another before the end of the year. He anticipates two more hires in 2014.

 
Source: Rick Arlow
Writer: Karin Connelly

When Lisa Reed was coaching clients on health and nutrition out of her Chagrin Falls office, she would always make them a healthy green juice. After time, Reed realized that some of her customers were coming more for the juice than they were for the counseling.
 
The juice, today known as Mean Green, is made with celery, cucumber, kale, spinach, romaine and lemon. “You really feel good because your body becomes alkaline,” explains Reed. “You crave it in a way because you feel good.”
 
Reed realized she had something with her juices. In 2012 she launched Garden of Flavor and this past April she delivered her first order of juices to Heinen’s. Today she is in almost every Heinen’s store, plus Whole Foods, Mustard Seed and Lemon Falls in Chagrin Falls. Reed’s juices also are in Dorothy Lane in Dayton and Columbus and Whole Foods in Cincinnati. In January Garden of Flavor will expand to Pennsylvania and Chicago.
 
In addition to Mean Green, Garden of Flavor currently features six juices that range from Goji Pineapple (goji pineapple, mint and ginger) to Twisted Roots (carrot and beet juices). Reed also has developed a one-day juice cleanse that is quite popular.
 
Ironically, Reed’s most loyal customers happen to be home juicers. “Our best customers are juicers themselves and do it at home,” she says. “They realize the cost of organic produce, the time and cleanup involved, and it’s a lot easier for someone to do it for them.”
 
Reed juices all of her fruits and vegetables in a 38-degree refrigerated space in Midtown. “It’s an ideal environment with very little oxidation or breakdown,” she explains, adding that she’s adjusted to the chilly work environment.
 
Reed’s son Clayton works for Garden of Flavor, and she uses a staffing firm to help with the labor involved. She plans on hiring two to three full time people in the near future.

 
Source: Lisa Reed
Writer: Karin Connelly

Dan Mansoor’s 30 years in nonprofit fundraising has taught him one thing. Well, it’s taught him a few things, actually. One is that people think they give to their favorite charities much more often than they actually do. Two: donor retention rates hover around only 40 percent. And three: 80 percent of charitable giving is still motivated by direct mail.
 
Mansoor thought there had to be a better way, one that makes it just as easy to make and track donations as buying a book on Amazon. So he created GiveNext, an online brokerage account of sorts that makes giving easy.
 
“It’s easier to buy a book than save a life,” Mansoor says. “The decision of making a gift is the hardest part. It shouldn’t be making the gift.”
 
GiveNext works for both donors and organizations. Donors simply sign up online, choose the charities of their choice and make donations. They can then generate a report of the year’s gifts for tax purposes. Nonprofits can register their causes, invite their donors to visit GiveNext to make a donation and receive timely donations.
 
With GiveNext, you’re one click away not only from helping a charity, but one click away from helping with any cause or emergency, says Mansoor. “How many of us wanted to help others after Hurricane Sandy, the Newtown shooting, the Boston bombing, the Philippine typhoon, or Illinois tornadoes? But we didn't because we did not know which charity to give to, or it was too cumbersome to give, or we were distracted by our busy lives. If all we had to do is get out our phone and type in an amount and hit ‘enter,’ more people would do more.”

Mansoor went through the most recent LaunchHouse Accelerator program and won first place and $20,000 in the COSE Business Pitch Competition on October 23. “It’s nice to know there are others out there who think the concept is somewhat worthy,” Mansoor says.
 
While Mansoor is the only GiveNext employee right now, he expects to have 30 to 50 employees in the next five years. He anticipates going live in the next two months.

 
Source: Dan Mansoor
Writer: Karin Connelly

Startups @ City Club is a new collaborative effort between the City Club of Cleveland  and the Cleveland Startup Collective to bring the startup community together in educational, social and thought-provoking environments.
 
The first event was launched at Cleveland Entrepreneurial Week in November, with speakers on technology, product development, investing and the overall startup community in Cleveland. “The main goal of the entrepreneurial speaker series is to install the values of lean startup methodology, the entrepreneurial-driven startup community and mentor-driven startup development,” says Morris Wheeler, organizer and founder of Drummond Road Capital. 

Speakers included Chris Heivly, founder of MapQuest, venture partner and founder of TechPint Paul Singh and Alexis Giles, vice president of business development at MOX.
 
The Cleveland Startup Collective is a grass roots organization focused on lean startup methodology – launching a new product to market in as little as 10 to 12 weeks with as little capital as possible. “Life’s too short to build a product no one wants,’ says Wheeler. “A number of us over the past two or three years believe that at its core, startups and startup investing need to revolve around the entrepreneur. ”
 
Wheeler says entrepreneurs in cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco get together on Friday nights, drink beer and discuss issues around their businesses. While casual meetings are starting to take off in Cleveland, Wheeler says the city needs more.
 
“All of the other organizations like JumpStart are important to entrepreneurial success, but in our view we need to be meeting the needs of the startup community, not defining the needs of the community.”
 
Startups @ City Club plans to host four to six events a year, some of which will be partnered with other events like TechPint. “The idea is to have many different activities,” says Wheeler. “We’ll have dialogs, educational events, pitch events and social events.”
 
Source: Morris Wheeler
Writer: Karin Connelly

Michelle Venorsky and Kate Davis have worked at some of the top advertising and communications agencies in town, recently at Marcus Thomas. But the dream of starting their own agency prompted the two, along with three other partners, to launch Hello! agency in September.

“We’ve had this idea brewing for a while now,” says Venorsky. “We absolutely love what we do and we’ve been working together for 10 years.”
 
Hello! focuses on developing close connections with their clients, Venorsky says, by engaging relationships and finding out what makes them tick. So it seemed only natural to name the agency Hello!. “When you think about any relationship, you have to introduce yourself,” says Venorsky. “We call ourselves an 'engagement agency' – we build relationships on insight and research.”
 
Davis, with a background in cultural anthropology, handles the research end – figuring out why people do certain things. Venorsky handles the public relations, marketing and social media aspects. Venorsky says it was the right time to take an “intelligent risk” and hang out their own shingle.
 
“There’s never been a better time or an easier time to build a relationship with your customers with so many media platforms,” Venorsky says. “We’re trying to be medianostic and build something that matters.”
 
Hello! is still looking for the ideal office space in Ohio City or Tremont, but in the meantime, Venorsky and Hall are busy signing on clients. They’ve landed four accounts so far.

 
Source: Michelle Venorsky
Writer: Karin Connelly
 

Eric Klein, chair of the Glickman Urology and Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, along with a team of researchers at the Clinic and Genomic Health, have developed a genomic test that determines the aggressiveness of prostate cancer and therefore helps doctors and patients decide the proper course of treatment.
 
“It’s a biopsy-based test that looks at how certain genes are turned on or off,” explains Klein. “Before it was developed we made an educated guess on how aggressive a man’s tumor was based on factors like age and health.”
 
Often there are multiple small tumors in prostate cancer. The Oncoptype DX Prostate Cancer test, developed for market by California-based Genomic Health, looks at the activity of certain genes within the tumor. Based on the results, treatment can range from surveillance to more aggressive treatment.
 
“We developed it in a way to tell what else is going on in the prostate,” says Klein. “About 20 to 25 percent of men who have this test are re-assigned to a different category of progression.”
 
Klein is pleased with what the test means for the treatment of prostate cancer. “First, it identifies those who have more aggressive cancer,” he says. “Second, it reassures those who choose surveillance.”
 
Klein has spent the past eight years developing the prostate genomic test. The University of California San Francisco spent three years validating the method, and it was released in May. The test is one of many advancements in genome-guided solid tumor analysis recognized by Cleveland Clinic Innovations as the number-two innovation in health care this year. Genomic Health has a similar test for treatment of breast cancer.
 
“This is the first foray into precision treatment for prostate cancer,” Klein says. “With this test a management decision can be made based on the characteristics of the tumor. It’s individual decision making based on that person’s disease. That’s’ where we want to be.”

 
Source: Eric Klein
Writer: Karin Connelly

Melissa Hale started Yates Apothecary -- a fragrance manufacturer -- on a bit of a whim. She and her husband, Quinn, just had their first child and had moved to Lakewood from Florida, when Hale decided to leave her job as a nuclear medicine technologist and start experimenting with perfumes.

“I spent my last five years as a nuclear med tech working directly with cancer patients and P.E.T. imaging,” recalls Hale. “Those five years took their toll on my emotional and mental state. I wanted to come home from work happy and relaxed and that wasn't happening.”
 
With a sleeping baby on her lap, Hale began experimenting with perfume notes that she bought online. With that, Yates Apothecary was born. The company is named after her beloved chocolate lab Yates, aka Pig.
 
Things weren’t easy at first, but Hale has turned Yates Apothecary into a thriving home-based business selling fragrances, lip balms and custom blended scents. With a recent move to a live-work loft on St. Clair, Hale has expanded her lab and is planning on creating a steam distillation lab to extract the oils herself. She also teaches blending classes and welcomes guests to stop by to purchase her products, chat or just share a cup of coffee.
 
Hale’s unique scents are all numbered after significant dates in her life. “I gravitate towards notes that one might think won't smell great blended,” says Hale. “For example, perfume oil No. 3456 is campfire, dirt and violet. I tend to stay away from the traditional blends and enjoy the unconventional. The challenge of making unusual notes smell appealing is very satisfying to me.”
 
Hale’s more popular blend -- and her favorite -- is No. 0398, her dear dog's birthday. The blend is made up of fragrances such as amber, cedar, vanilla, oak moss and coconut oil.
 
“He was a crazy chocolate lab who loved walks in the woods,” she says. “I wanted to capture that feeling of walking in the woods with him. I wanted to capture that emotion, and I wanted to capture those memories.”
 
Hale’s products are available on the Yates site and at a number of local boutiques.

 
Source: Melissa Hale
Writer: Karin Connelly

More than 1,300 people attended the first annual Cleveland Entrepreneurship Week last week, participating in everything from pitch sessions to speaker sessions and after-hours networking events.

Big names in the entrepreneurial community from outside the region, such as MapQuest founder Chris Heivly and managing director of The Startup Factory, were among those in attendance who helped make the event a success.
 
“Overall, ClevelandEW was successfully able to showcase and celebrate the growth of entrepreneurship and the unique ecosystem being created here in Northeast Ohio,” says Todd Goldstein, founder of LaunchHouse, lead sponsor of the event.
 
Goldstein reports that all of the EW events were well attended. “More than 300 attended LHX2013 Demo Day and the ClevelandEW opening party at LaunchHouse,” he says. “Other popular events were Startups @ The City Club, a new entrepreneurial and community-driven speaker series with the mission to educate, inspire and provoke entrepreneurial thought throughout Northeast Ohio, and the speaker sessions at Ernst and Young.”
 
Several of the startups in the LHX2013 Demo Day were able to secure leads, convert attendees to customers and identify potential investors. Goldstein says all 11 companies that gave pitches at Demo Day felt good, although a bit overwhelmed, about the experience.
 
“Right now, they are all doing a lot of follow up to the leads they made during Demo Day and ClevelandEW,” he says. “They are all rock stars to us and we are looking forward to helping them toward the next stage in their companies.”

 
Source: Todd Goldstein
Writer: Karin Connelly

On October 28, the Refugee Services Collaborative (RSC) released its first-ever study of the economic impact Cleveland’s 4,500 refugees have made on the region since 2000. Refugees are legal U.S. residents who have come here to avoid persecution in their home countries.
 
"We felt there were a lot of negative misconceptions about refugees, so we commissioned the economic impact study to uncover the facts," says Luanne Bole-Becker, RSC’s special projects and data management coordinator.

The report, generated by Chmura Economics and Analytics and funded through a grant from the Cleveland Foundation, shows that refugees created and sustained 650 jobs in 2012 as a result of household spending, small business creation and through the agencies in place to help them. The total economic impact was $48 million in these three areas.
 
“Refugees bolster the population and their spending creates jobs in the economy,” explains Chmura’s Dan Meges, economist and business development manager. “Without refugee arrivals, this spending and economic activity would be occurring somewhere else in the United States. They also increase the demand for local housing by buying or renting homes, and they increase the socio-cultural diversity of the city, which has other positive spillovers.”
 
RSC was formed in 2011 and grew out of dialogue between the region’s many refugee service agencies. The report shows that while refugees typically find work in food service, housekeeping, sewing, factory production work and seasonal landscaping, they are also more likely to be entrepreneurs and start small businesses once they have settled in the area.
 
"Refugees are positive for Cleveland,” says Bole-Becker. “While they need some initial help, it's an investment in a group of people that don't take jobs; they make jobs. We hope to increase capacity so that more refugees can be resettled here, adding to Cleveland's growth."
 
Meges adds, “From an analytic viewpoint, what matters is their average family income, which is estimated to be about $31,000 annually in the Cleveland area in 2012.”
 
More than 17,000 refugees have settled in Cleveland since 1983.

 
Source: Dan Meges, Luanne Bole-Becker
Writer: Karin Connelly