Cincinnati is also a Contender for the Super Bowl of Startups!

The Bengals are in the Super Bowl, but we're also contending for the Super Bowl of startups. We're even on a winning streak in sustainability. I kid you not!

First, some perspective. I’m a West Coast transplant who worshiped the Los Angeles Rams while growing up and attended UC Santa Cruz on the southern tip of the Silicon Valley.?After business school on the East Coast, I literally tripped into Cincinnati for a job at P&G, and never looked back. I launched and sold a startup here, and even after leaving for an eight-year stint leading Digital for Nestle in Switzerland, I "boomeranged" back to this region and have become one of Cincinnati’s most energized ambassadors.

I want to take full advantage of this "moment" to highlight all that Greater Cincinnati — and Ohio — have to offer venture investors, serial entrepreneurs, and startup teams looking for the absolute best place to start and scale.?

Unprecedented Venture Momentum

The Venture community is putting down serious roots here. Last year we nearly tripled VC investment in the region.?In recent years we've doubled our number of VC firms including?CincyTech,?Refinery,?Lightship Capital,?RC Capital,?Narya,?Allos Ventures,?eGateway Capital,?Queen City Angels,?H-Ventures, Candid Ventures, and?Connetic Ventures.? Upstart?Orange Grove Bio?just relocated here from Boston to build on world class medical research from UC Medical and Cincinnati Children’s.

Building on big exits in the past (e.g. Dotloop to Zillow), we celebrated our region’s largest exit, Workday’s acquisition of?VNDLY?(a Cintrifuse member and Fund investment).?Three record breaking raises occurred in recent months including?Enable Injections?($215 million), CinCor, developer of cardiovascular therapeutics ($200M IP0 in January, stock is up 50%), and 80-Acres Farms ($161 million). ?

And our regional pipeline of promising startups is growing at a record- setting pace.?Cloverleaf and Cerkl,?are energizing HR practices.??Donovan Energy?is reinventing green.?PayTheory?and?Coterie, part of our?Fintech Frontier?initiative,?are pushing the frontiers of payments and small business insurance.?RedCircle?is automating podcasting.

Physna, with employees in Cincinnati and Columbus, is considered the "Google of 3D Object." Akru is pioneering fractionalized (and democratized) real-estate. Just funded PayTheory is walking the talk on inclusivity through wickedly smart, family-friendly payment tools. ContactCI, proudly on display at CES, is "putting the haptic gloves on" to win in the metaverse. Hearty just launched the first professional NFTs for innovators. (A half-dozen of my Cintrifuse board members claimed them.)

Game-Changing Innovation

We’re generating interest and investment because VCs are recognizing that we’re achieving critical mass in game-changing, high-growth areas.

As?Marketwatch recently reported, we’re becoming the?“Great Supply Way” to the US and the world, with leading-edge advantages in logistics, advanced manufacturing, shipping, and more. The newly opened Amazon Air Prime hub combined with DHL operations makes Greater Cincinnati the #1 eCommerce distribution hub in the nation, and startups like?Amify?are rapidly moving operations to be closer to this center of commerce. Our CVG Airport is becoming a de facto "Startup Platform" and can run up to 80 startup pilots at a time. (Examples: IoT leader Losant and autonomous vehicle player ThorDrive.)

Biomedical research, health IT and medical device manufacturing continue to be strong areas of long-term opportunity for the Cincinnati region. These industries are supported by the region’s three research universities, its extensive network of medical institutions, growing innovation ecosystem, existing biohealth companies, and extensive domain expertise and experience of long-time venture firm CincyTech.

Greenest City -- Say What?!?

I know this will surprise my California friends (and relatives) but Cincinnati continues to top national scorecards as America’s most sustainable city.?As reported in Fast Company, our fastest growing Unicorn is a vertical farming play —?80 Acres?Farms— that uses 97% less water and is redefining sustainable, healthy supply chains.

Our Zoo is ranked the #1 most sustainable zoo in the nation -- many times over. Banking leader Fifth Third Bank is the first large bank to achieve 100% sustainability. The City of Cincinnati is building the largest municipal solar array in the country.?? P&G -- the world's largest advertiser, headquartered in Cincinnati -- brought half a dozen bold green innovations to CES, and Kroger (one of the world's largest grocery retailer) is investing millions in startups across the US dedicated to #ZeroHungerZeroWaste.

When we pitched FIFA for the World Cup, our civic leaders and major corporations pledged to deliver the world’s first #ZeroWaste World Cup.?We’re now rallying around a future of advanced green mobility and manufacturing.

And, just up the road near Columbus, Intel is building the largest — and greenest — chip manufacturing plant in the world. (See SF Chronicle coverage.)?"When this goes into production… there will not be more advanced chips being manufactured anywhere in the world,”?said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.? It will be 100% powered by renewable energy — and they have committed to meet the highest water conservation standards and to achieve?zero?waste?to landfills. This $20 billion project will net 3,000 direct jobs with cascading benefits across the entire tech supply chain.

A Future-Focused Community

We're committed to be the most welcoming region in America for women and minority entrepreneurs. Our largest employers from P&G and Kroger to Fifth Third Bank have set industry-leading targets for supplier and entrepreneurial diversity.

Our region just launched a $100 million?Minority Business Accelerator.?And one of the largest Black-owned VC firms —?Lightship Capital,?— is based here and investing here. Inclusion focused themes, topics, and speakers dominated our extremely well attended "Startup Cincy Week" last Fall.

We launched a major league soccer team, FC Cincinnati, at the speed of a startup, and built a downtown stadium the MLS commissioner touted as among the best in the world.?We host one of the top tennis tournaments in the world, the Western & Southern Open! We're even supporting the explosive growth of Pickleball. (Thanks Main Street Ventures for funding Nettie.)

?From the University of Cincinnati to Miami, NKU, and Xavier, our universities are building innovation districts and hubs to fill talent needs of the future.?Our arts and culture offerings top every national chart.

We just elected a dynamic new mayor -- our city’s first Asian American mayor, in fact -- who is making the startup community a central plank of his economic agenda. He also led the entire City Council on bikes to their inauguration as a symbol of Cincinnati’s progressive energy and spirit.?Watch?this overview reel.

?The "Great Redistribution" of Venture Capital

I'm obviously giddy with pride that Cincinnati is in the Super Bowl, but there's an even bigger context around what I'm writing about, and Steve Case put framed this perfectly at the annual meeting of Revolution Ventures (the firm he founded).

"Conventional wisdom was that it would be really hard to build really valuable companies in other cities outside of Silicon Valley. But that started changing about five years ago and that dynamic really started accelerating during the pandemic"

Case also notes that over the past decade "the proportion of seed and early stage capital going to Bay Area's startups has been declining and had a noteworthy drop over the past two years. The share is now on pace to drop below 30%."

Cincinnati, Columbus, Tulsa, Pittsburgh, Lexington, Cleveland -- they are all primed to take full advantage of what I'll dub the "Great Redistribution" of venture capital.

Here there's also a growing recognition that startups and large incumbent corporations share a symbiotic relationship. Guy Persaud, the new chairman of Cintrifuse who also serves as the President of New Business and Growth for Procter and Gamble, recently highlighted Cincinnati as a "dreamland of possibilities." He also highlighted the competitive advantage of large companies investing more in local startups who are shaping the future. Take a look.

Here to Make Noise: Let’s Talk!

I love what Joe Burrow said ahead of the AFC Championship Game, on their way to the Super Bowl: “I’m tired of the underdog narrative. We are a really, really good team. We are here to make noise.”

He could just as well have been talking about our region. We’re making our own noise, as all the momentum I’ve highlighted demonstrates. And we’re eager to talk more with you and your team.

Additional Resources

• REDI Cincinnati -- Expand and Grow in the Cincinnati Region
• Jobs Ohio -- Find Opportunity Here
• Cintrifuse Startup Membership -- It's practically free, we'll do everything you can to get you going with your startup dream.

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