So, I’m participating in this event next week where I get on stage with people I largely have tried to avoid for my entire startup career.
CLE people tell me the scene is changing and actually this Techstars report gives me even more hope. I think I may try to give everyone in CLE another chance. My business does need support (what startup doesn’t)…and it’d be nice to get it from HOME.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about Techstars and I hope that some of their transparency rubs off on JumpStart and other Cleveland entrepreneurship services.

I’m writing this because I hate censorship and really want to get my thoughts out because I don’t know what the event is going to be like.

 

My Cleveland Entrepreneurship Background & a Little of My Personality:
I was involved in entrepreneurship and student government in high school and community college. My two loves – history/community/law and creating/disrupting/transforming.
I went to CWRU because it was close to home and their marketing was all about research. “Oooh, I’d get to make things here,” is what I thought.

I left CWRU to work. University is/was not for me. I wasn’t ‘good’ at it and I wanted to create, not regurgitate. I felt it was an expensive adult daycare, a faster paced high school…I realized I had long romanticized college because they marketed the research labs not the boring homework, dense reading, and freakishly long tests.
I desired living on my own, paying my own bills, and personal freedom.

I left CWRU terribly, without any remorse. I remember sitting in my dean’s office and telling her I was leaving. She said I had to go around and get signatures from professors about my leaving, or something like that… She handed me a form. I felt it was a ploy to inconvenience my leaving. I told her I wasn’t going to fill it out and that I hoped she would, “…take a hint when I don’t come back next semester.”
I felt it was the adult thing to do and that I respectfully told her I was leaving. She disrespectfully ignored that and gave me a form and “if you change your mind” talks.
I was done! School is the only place where a customer would have to deal with something like that! Go around to everyone in our company so that they can sign this form that you’re not a customer anymore.

I was involved in entrepreneurship there but it was terrible. I was terrible. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember meeting with my ‘team’ just to have a time where I felt like I was creating with other people, talking about doing because constant tests and homework were depressing me.

When I was there, I was involved with a bunch of JumpStart umbrella orgs and NEO college activities for students, tried various competitions, etcetera. But, I didn’t win anything. I sucked at pitching because…
1) I wasn’t confident in my product
2) I didn’t learn the art of speaking about technical things at a ‘low level’
3) What is summarization? Yeah I’d drone on about…nothing.

Well… that startup failed before I even left school because I stopped believing in the product completely.

After I left CWRU (and before creating my new and current startup with a technology that I 3000% know will outlive me whether or not I fail or succeed at marketing and selling it), I saw the attrition of every well-funded, media boasted, CWRU shill startup that I had begun with.
Moreover, I had also heard a lot of negative stories about JumpStart at the time I was at CWRU: https://medcitynews.com/2011/03/jumpstart-becomes-target-of-criticism-from-local-entrepreneurs/
I had given them a shot and I blew it. Others had been CWRU and JumpStart shills and they failed.

I knew that the Cleveland entrepreneurship scene was not going to be the ultimate reason why any startup I went on to create would fail or succeed.
And, with Zipr Shift that reigns true.

 

I Agree with pretty much the whole Techstars report except…
Funding.

You know what successful entrepreneurship communities don’t have a ton of? Non-profit VCs.
They have for-profit VC competitors.
Sure. Cleveland has a lot of capital. But, my opinion is that it’s focused in entities like Jumpstart which are non-profit and not for-profit and thus entrepreneur and Jumpstart incentives aren’t totally aligned.

A for-profit VC with no deals STARVES.
A non-profit VC with no deals just waits for their next state-funded paycheck.

Jumpstart needs competition and its employees need to starve. They need to be hungry just like entrepreneurs.

 

Ohio needs more Competition and Transparency

Ohio startup hubs are very territorial because the state funds areas, creates umbrella non-profit VCs centered around university tech transfer.
Oh yeah, we can’t forget Jumpstart’s history, it’s fateful beginnings of being basically CWRU tech transfer. No wonder they like medical tech!
Columbus is centered around Ohio State. Cincy…U Cincy. And so on…
Well, academia is the government’s charity. Universities get a lot of federal and state grant dollars because they claim they’re bettering the world by existing (as a charity.)

People go to Jumpstart because they have money. They’re the org in NEO with the most money for entrepreneurs.
There’s really nothing else! There’s no choice! No competition.
You go to Jumpstart or you do like me – go on without a community and support. (…and yet, again, I’m doing the same or better than the startups that had all the NEO/Jumpstart support. So are many others.)

 

Have you ever looked at Jumpstart’s annual reports? I have. And, the data doesn’t make sense to me. I see gaps, inconsistencies.
The reports from their beginnings are more detailed than their reports today.
Is their criteria lessening or are they just comfortable that they’ll get funding no matter what they put out for results?
By now they know state funders pretty well…

Self-reporting of success metrics is not good. It should not continue. The State of Ohio needs to have confidential meetings or reports directly from the entrepreneurs themselves.
And, like all self-reported stuff (think taxes) from or to the government, orgs should be audited.
Jumpstart is able to self-report anything they want. The reported info only really flows between them and the state funders. Entrepreneurs don’t really confirm or deny the narrative.
Zipr Shift has not received any Jumpstart support but I was told that I’m in their database.

 

The Culture…

Everyone from Ohio would always ask me what my background was. What degrees I have.
Are you an engineer? YES. Without a degree. I engineer the zipper I sell.
You don’t like calling me that? Ok it doesn’t matter. Academia co-opted the term and now it has a negative connotation as you can be an engineer without ever building anything so long as you have a piece of paper.
You know who also asks me that? The military and the government. The biggest bureaucrats in America.

I think Ray Leach didn’t get what Techstars was saying about the culture.
He talks about Columbus having a ton of young people and that’s why they’re doing better than NEO.
Um…young people aren’t in positions of power.
When Techstars said “Top Down/Old Boys Club/Command/Hierarchial/Govt Led Culture,” I’m pretty sure they meant YOU/Jumpstart.

…and it all goes back to CWRU tech transfer beginnings.
Ohio is very conservative about education. Like I have to have a degree in engineering in order to know what I’m doing.
People with no paper credentials got us to the Moon and back.
Every PhD scientist stands on the shoulders of a non-degreed thinker… from cave men to Nikola Tesla.

 

The thing about Silicon Valley and other successful startup communities is that people judge you by your works. Not your age. Not your degrees. But, what you’re making.

I’m literally fighting against government funding of a bunch of academics who make gecko grip stuff, have duplicate SBIR awards because they survive off of them (white collar welfare), and that sent me a falsified c&d naming an entire law firm about my discussion of it.
And that’s because, ever since my website went online in late 2016, DoD contractors have been emailing me like crazy. But the government refuses to fund a 20-something dropout (and doesn’t want procurement disruption because of dual use, proprietary tech.)

Are they (DoD and nanoGriptech) more ethical than me? I don’t think so…especially because a closure failure could mean life or death for someone.
Is their product superior to mine just because they have Phds? No way and I would love to have a public testing to prove that.

SV culture judges me by my product. Nobody likes manufacturing because it’s capital intensive but they judge me by my WORKS.
Nobody really cares about your degrees and credentials and experience and pedigree.
Ohio and DoD which are very conservative would say there’s no way a young, Black, non-degreed engineer could do something superior to several PhDs.
And you are wrong.

 

I’ve met teenagers working on and getting funded for advanced AI and machine learning in SV.
In Ohio, those people (young and no terminal degrees) are thought only worthy of being indentured servants to university professors.
That’s the culture problem.
The older people, typically bound in some way to an academic institution, playing gatekeeper.

 

Again, young people may begin change but old people finish it because…
Mark Zuckerberg taught the world that one can be a very young billionaire.
But, one must STILL be age 35 to be President.

Congresspeople, especially Senators, are typically old as heck.
…and older people have historically outnumbered younger people.

 

When Jumpstart starts funding misfits like SV does then the culture that needs to be changed will change.

When Ohio leadership starts respecting the capabilities of people AFTER they demonstrate their WORKS instead of after they rattle off their credentials, then the culture will change.

When Ohio gets rid of non-profit self-reporting, makes all reported data public, and audits every org then the culture will change.

When the State of Ohio stops pooling resources around universities, creating institutional gate keepers and mainly avenues for tech transfer, then the culture will change. Those people who didn’t go to school here don’t feel as welcome. Students are broke and tired (from classes), and academics aren’t really risk takers. Academics especially. They live and die by government grants in academia and when they try to be entrepreneurial, they typically end up as SBIR mills!

When Jumpstart becomes a for-profit VC that competes with every entity that is now under its umbrella for talent then the culture will change.
Pooling resources is bad for entrepreneurs. A VC that doesn’t starve with poor results is bad, poorly aligned with entrepreneurs.
It’s like having an entrepreneurial Standard Oil and everyone needs oil but no one really likes that Rockefeller…

 

 

Jumpstart (Umbrella) is Cleveland’s 21st century Standard Oil. Break it up.
Ironically they’re in Cleveland and New York: “We were founded in Northeast Ohio so that’s still where the majority of our efforts and activities happen, but we do work all across the state of Ohio and in New York.”

Gosh I love history. Always repeating and stuff…