Staying Positive About Our Entrepreneurial Future During the Meltdown

I don't know about you, but staying focused on business outcomes and goals, each hour of every day, has been uniquely challenging for me of late. Between the election, the financial meltdown, working on new strategies to help move the region forward, etc., I am certainly feeling the full brunt of what I thought working in the quasi-public/private space might be like. Having said this, I want to share that while I believe I have a good sense of the challenges ahead, as I work my regular 15 hour days, I do believe we are going to find a way to continue our momentum at JumpStart focused on assisting entrepreneurs with new, big ideas in all industries that have the promise to create opportunities for our region's citizens. When people around the region were discouraged about the recent Plain Dealer article on Pittsburgh - I shared with them that JumpStart's operating model is based on another proven model in Pittsburgh called Innovation Works. We partner with Innovation Works all the time on initiatives that not only make sense for each of our organization's but also for our mega-region including activities like the TechBelt Initiative and the 3 Rivers Venture Fair. When people ask me about leadership, I agree that our leaders are incredibly burdened by numerous challenges (some of which they are partly at fault for either creating or not doing a better job of minimizing or resolving). At the same time I get a chance to see up close what many of our leaders are doing to make the region better and it is inspiring to see them in action. Pittsburgh's leaders also have their own major problems that were ignored in the latest PD article but written about on a Pittsburgh blog. I think that the good news - in the long run - is that a larger portion of the country is now starting to understand some of the economic challenges of Northeast Ohio in a very real way. This new understanding will (or already has) accelerated a shift in political power and public policy. While it is not perfectly clear and certain right now, I do believe that this shift will serve NEO well. The key for our work at JumpStart, the statistic that we get really excited about, is that we have helped "real" start-up companies raise over $100 million in capital in the last four years. According to the National Venture Capital Association or NVCA, these investments have the potential to create 5,000 jobs by 2015-2020 (see the NVCA's Venture Impact Report). And if the economic train does not completely come off the tracks in 2009 and 2010, the momentum we have created should attract at least another $200M in private sector investment in startup companies in Northeast Ohio, which would mean that we would have a very good chance to generate 10,000 new jobs by 2020. This may not seem like much when we are at the bottom of the trench we are in currently, but 15,000 jobs at the equivalent of $70,000 per job is over $1 billion in payroll each year! These kinds of numbers are our motivation at JumpStart. We strive to hit our organizational goals everyday while helping entrepreneurs' reach their personal and organizational goals. Staying focused and positive is the most effective way we can contribute to a quicker turnaround for our region. Ray Leach is CEO of JumpStart and brings his energy and leadership experiences from founding five high-growth entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial endeavors in the last 20 years. Ray is a Sloan Fellow and earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also earned a BA in Finance from the University of Akron.