Cleveland, Ohio– Cleveland is in the midst of a rust belt revolution. Transforming a manufacturing city to an innovative tech powerhouse is no easy task, but Cleveland, along with other former manufacturing hubs like Buffalo and Pittsburgh, is doing just that. Flashstarts aims to be on the cutting edge of that revitalization, and we know it’s only possible with community support.

Flashstarts invested in their first round of portfolio companies in 2013 and has spent the past several years carefully building our portfolio (see this year’s companies), launching a top tier accelerator, and expanding our programs to become a more comprehensive startup resource into the Cleveland community. From hosting the RNC and the World Series to a basketball championship, Cleveland has developed incredible momentum this year, and it’s time to put that momentum to work in the startup industry.

Click here to view the complete annual report.

At Flashstarts, they bring together the raw materials necessary for a startup – people ideas, and money – to help form successful businesses, and this year, we’ve really begun to see our efforts pay off. We have seen an increasing number of successful company launches with each accelerator class, and once startups are on a track for success, they serve as one of the primary sources of wealth generation and job creation in our community.

Each of Flashstarts’ core offerings are concentrated in one of three primary areas that are critical for startups: capital, resources, and talent. Within each of these segments, we have seen notable progress over the past few years both as part of the larger Ohio startup community and through the initiation of several of our own programs.

We recently published the Flashstarts 2016 Annual Report (included below). This report is intended to offer a high level view of our operations, progress, and newly launched programs to investors, aspiring startups, Cleveland entrepreneurs, and everyone in between.

A few highlights from the Annual Report include:

Flashstarts Labs Program – The Labs program is our pre-accelerator mentoring program that helps startups form and test their business concepts while simultaneously serving as a highly efficient due diligence filter for the accelerator and increasing our deal flow potential.

Ohio Third Frontier – The State of Ohio Third Frontier disseminated $200M in seed funding last month which will be invested in 400+ startups over the next 3 years, meaning the demand for startups exceeds the current market supply.

Global EIR Program – The Global Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) program establishes collaborative partnerships between universities and international entrepreneurs. This program serves as a resource for collegiate entrepreneurship centers and attracts international entrepreneurs and their innovative ideas to our region.

These efforts are only a few of the many we have implemented at Flashstarts and represent an aggregation of what we have learned thus far. Please consider joining us in strengthening Cleveland’s entrepreneurial community.

View their complete 2016 Annual Report to see where we’re going and how you can join our efforts or contact us directly at investor.relations@flashstarts.com.

Staff Writer