Rocket Ventures is Northwest Ohio’s first Pre-seed funding source. We stand ready to address your high- tech business needs. We want to hear from you! Our highly skilled team can provide you with a customized portfolio of services to accelerate the growth of your business.

Rocket Ventures is pleased to introduce our portfolio companies. These are the dynamic companies we have been proud to assist. Their success stories began with a revolutionary technology and outstanding business opportunity, and continued with a good deal of hard work and collaboration. Rocket Ventures was there to support these Northwest Ohio entrepreneurs by providing essential pre-seed venture capital and enhanced business management services.

Discover how you can become a part of an ever growing entrepreneurial community in Northwest Ohio. If you are looking for ways to connect with others with like interests be sure to review the events calendar listed below.

If you have a new technology venture that is ready to take off, Rocket Ventures is the first place to go for help. We seek outstanding entrepreneurs whose businesses have great potential and are ready to grow. We have money to invest and our team of experts provides a wide range of services to help you. We are a non-profit organization that was formed in 2007 by the Regional Growth Partnership, and we exist to help create high-tech, high-wage jobs in Northwest Ohio.

Rocket Ventures is Northwest Ohio’s premier venture capital firm and entrepreneurial assistance organization. Begun in 2007 with public and private monies, Rocket Ventures prepares high-tech start-up companies for funding and sustainability by providing intensive business assistance, enhanced business management, and equity investment. We welcome entrepreneurs and Northwest Ohio companies with innovative technologies and novel business concepts to contact us.

Julie Myers - Rocket Ventures Marketing Manager

myers@rgp.org

There are many a-ha moments while marketing a technology start-up. Products are so new and the marketplace may be so dynamic that what you may think of as fact today can turn out to be just the beginning of the story.

How do you find out the rest of the story without sinking your entire valuable and, let’s face it, sometimes rare, marketing budget, into something that just doesn’t fit your needs?

The answer is simple, in marketing, as in life, the best plans are the most well thought out plans. This doesn’t mean that you should be so stringent that you don’t market your product until an entire 5-year strategic initiative is created. Rather, it means to take time to step back and assess your needs. Don’t just rush into purchasing an entire plan with pretty collateral from an agency that may or may not be the best solution for you – just because it looks good.

 Are you just looking to generate buzz and not ready to begin selling? If so, having a plan that involves press releases or relies heavily on social media may be in your best interest.

If you’re ready to begin selling, it’s important to have both a marketing and a sales plan. One of the biggest mistakes a start-up can make is thinking that marketing is the same thing as sales. You can be an awesome marketer but a horrible salesperson and vice versa.

Make friends with other marketers. We’ve all been in brainstorming meetings where ideas are flying across the room. Sometimes the best ideas come from other ideas. Having a sounding board for your ideas can be a FREE way of gaining valuable insight into your market. Plus, sitting down and having a meeting with a friend can help you take a step back and get a better grasp on what you’re trying to achieve.

Get your feet wet, but don’t dive in! A common theme heard around the start-up world is “This idea is HUGE! The possibilities are endless!” That’s great and may be true, but trying to get into every market will prove exhausting and may leave your clients wondering what your niche really is.  Figure out your best core market and stick with it. You can branch out into other markets once you have established brand recognition.

Finally, there is no magic marketing pill or plan that will work for everyone. This is a secret that most marketers don’t want to admit. If it were as simple as following the five P’s of marketing there would be no business failures and we’d all be rich. Find out what works for you and your company and stick with it!

And now you know, the rest of the story…

We’re the Edison Technology Center that’s responsible for technology-based economic development within food processing and agriculture and agribusiness, and we tend to define that rather loosely.

You span a lot of different areas, from alternative energy, to food safety, to sustainability to food security and local foods. Where do you seem to be spending most of your energy these days?

Well, it varies. I would say recently we’re really involved in food safety and food security. I think you can lump local food into that, because that’s one of the drivers behind the demand for local food. Energy costs are a huge trend that is really transforming our society. That’s also an opportunity for agribusinesses, because we have alternative fuels, or fuels that can be grown from sustainable sources. Plus, it’s also one of the factors that also pushes local foods to the forefront. The fact that transportation costs are so high. “Functional foods” are another. The concept is food products that have preventive medical properties. A lot of these substances are found in crops that can be, or are being produced in Ohio, whether it’s some of the anti-oxidants that are found in berries, whether it’s lycopenes that are found in tomatoes or some of the compounds that are in dairy products.

What are the biggest issues facing the food industry?

There might not be an easy politically correct way to say this, but I really think one of the biggest issues facing the industry is lack of control over how products are priced and marketed. The food industry has really given up control to food retailers. So, the net result of that is too many food products have been turned to commodities. It’s difficult to say that we should pay more for our food, but the way I would phrase it is we should get more for our food dollar. Another issue is food safety. We need better technology to detect pathogens and better technology to deal with them.

Are you helping folks with new technology?

I think Ohio has the opportunity to be at the forefront of safe processing technologies. One is ultra-high pressure sterilization, which isn’t a new technology, but it’s a new commercial technology and a CIFT-member company, Sandridge Foods in Medina is, I believe, the second commercial installation of this technology in the country. Essentially, what ultra-high pressure does is isostatically applies lots of pressure — 60,000 to 80,000 psi to products, and that pressure disrupts the DNA within pathogenic bacteria and removes their ability to reproduce so food can be made shelf stable and you don’t affect the flavor. You can also deactivate spoilage enzymes. We’re helping to promote companies and products that might want to use this technology. The other thing that’s going on here in Ohio, and this is something we organized with Ohio State University Department of Food Science and Kent State University – and I believe we have four companies involved too — is Ohio has one of the few research companies for electron beam sterilization. We’ve for the last two years been sterilizing things with electron beams up at Kent State. And we’re in the process of doing our sensory evaluations, and I really think maybe now the time is right for some consumer education.

You recently sponsored a chocolate showcase that highlighted Ohio candy makers. How do you work with entrepreneurs like that?

We really try to connect people in small businesses up to different markets. Kroger has been a very good partner in that phase of what we do. We have product showcases for our small companies. We have a kitchen incubator that we operate, which is in Haskins — and we rent time on production equipment for companies that want to come in and produce things for retail sale. One of the things you see with food entrepreneurs is they say “everybody likes this stuff when I make it at home, and I give it to all my relatives and they want more” and there’s such a sense of personal identification with products, but you know the food business is a tough one to be in.

It’s one thing to make a product, it’s another to run a company

Well, that’s right. One other thing we do as kind of an adjunct to that whole activity is we have our signature food contest. The idea was we have so many restaurants around Toledo, most of them have a specialty they would like to sell retail, so we had a competition. We focused on restaurants, although we opened it up the second year for anybody — and the third year as well. We appoint a panel of judges and we ask people to bring in their product concepts as well as samples of their product. For the winners, we do everything for them for free, up to and including filing their process, getting their process authority for them, getting their license. We go all the way up to making them test batches so they can make a presentation to (a retailer). We had a two-way tie the first year and a three-way tie the second, and of those five winners we’ve had, I think four of the five are on the grocery store shelves at some level. So it’s a good way to help promote.

What are some of the things people find surprising about CIFT?

That there’s someone that actually does what we do.

Any new projects that excite you?

The two I talked about (nonthermal sterilization) are top of the list. Also in the area of functional foods, we’ve kicked off several projects. The reason I think they’re so interesting is because they are things we can do here in Ohio and we can do them relatively quickly. Those kind of things have typically tended to be the property of big multinational companies, so to have small, independent Ohio companies doing those kids of things really is exciting.

Without the staple of the automotive industry, what is the new economic face of Northwest Ohio?

The new economic face is alternative energy, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing and materials and electronics. We have 65 new innovative technology companies started with support of the Third Frontier. Of those, none are in the automotive business.

How would you compare your effort in San Diego in turning around that economy to what’s happening in Toledo now?

We’re probably about 15 to 20 years behind what we did in San Diego. San Diego was a region based on tourism, real estate development and defense. With a downturn and high unemployment, San Diego was suffering in the late-1980s. There is almost a parallel dynamic to what we’re doing here in Northwest Ohio. San Diego converted its economy out of necessity in 1990, and we’re trying save our economy (in Toledo) in 2010. In 1990, there were 60 biotech companies in San Diego. Today, there are well over 1,000. In Northwest Ohio, we have 70 biotech companies — the biotech industry has been one of our biggest areas of growth. If I laid the numbers out on a board you would see so many similarities. The key to this area is diversifying our economic base.

What are some of Toledo’s new strengths?

There’s a diverse base of companies starting to grow here. I always talk about … economic development is a lot like human evolution. We’re changing. Without the base of the glass industry in Toledo there wouldn’t be a solar industry — the main material for the solar industry is glass. It’s kind of a logical thing. There are a lot of other ancillary businesses that come with solar industry. There are assemblers installers, framers, inverter companies and suppliers of chemicals.

There are many companies in RGP’s portfolio, but what’s the company that has you excited at this moment?

Right now, we’re very excited about the rail company CSX. They are building their largest intermodal transportation hub in North Baltimore — about 30 minutes from here. It’s going to be their epicenter for intermodal transportation in the Midwest — their Midwest headquarters. There will be hundreds of jobs, and it could turn into thousands of jobs, from what they’ve said.

A lot of the new jobs in Northwest Ohio are highly skilled. How much does education play a role in the success of growing Toledo’s economy?

Education plays a big role — anywhere from community college to applied research institutions. We engage the University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, University of Findlay, Owens Community College, Terra Community College and Northwest State Community College. They all bring different skill sets. The idea is we’re always trying to help you grow you’re company. We don’t want you to be at the back of the boat.

Is Toledo on the right track?

We have a long way to go, but we’re moving in the right direction. The goal is to get to 100 new companies. We’ve seen $41 million capital dollars come here because of a new economic value that we’re creating. Of 65 companies we’ve started, 21 have come from outside of the state of Ohio. They’re coming from California, New York, Boston, Connecticut and Chicago. One of the unintended consequences from the Third Frontier is that companies are coming from outside the state to do business here. That’s been extremely positive.

If you had a crystal ball, what would it say about the future of Toledo? Let’s say five years in the future.

I think you’ll find in five years, people will say ‘Wow, we’ve made great progress.’ In five years, we’re going to have greater venture capital, a diversifying economic base, new opportunities and we’ll continue to have new employment. It’s a marathon without an end. We look back and learn lessons, but we don’t get depressed when stuff happens. Lay-offs are the stroke of a pen. If you want to hire people, that’s a six-month process. We need move forward with job creation. That’s never-ending battle.

There are a number of ways to evaluate your chance of success, including whether you are an entrepreneur with the “right stuff” or if your business has the “right stuff.”

The following evaluation should be made before making any new start-up business decisions:

A)      Market assessment

B)      Securing realistic funding sources

C)      Forecasting sales, expenses and cash flows

D)      Potential profitability

E)      Regulatory, legal issues

F)      Personal costs

Arguably, the most important issue revolves around determining who or what your market niche is. You need to quickly address a market review that indicates who are your clients, where are they located, how will you reach them and what are the costs associated with this process.

Secondly, start-up businesses require varying amounts of cash. Figure out how much it will cost to get your business open on its first day and then determine how much working capital will be needed to keep it running for a period of time - typically 90 to 120 days. Be prepared to personally provide a great deal of this early money from your own finances, and then work to secure traditional funding (banks) or from possible angel investors.

When you have completed your market assessment, it is vital that you work with an accountant or local economic development agency to develop projections which will include sales, expenses and burn rates. This information is not only vital when determining potential profitability, but will also help guide you in your effort to secure the proper amount of financing, and also timing as well.

Most businesses have either regulatory or legal issues that have to be dealt with at some point,  such as OSHA, the FDA, health departments, city, state and federal laws, etc. The sooner you identify them, the better prepared you will be.

Last but not least, very few entrepreneurs take into consideration the personal “life” costs associated with starting their own business. How does this impact your family, your personal financial situation, your “day” job, personal and legal risks?

Although there are many more issues you should work through before making a decision, this exercise will certainly help you decide if you have the “right stuff!”

Daniel P Slifko