The free event is moderated by Jeff St. Clair, WKSU host of All Things Considered and producer of the station’s award-winning Exploradio series.

Panelists include Doug Weintraub, CEO of Bounce Innovation Hub; Cathy Belk, president of JumpStart; Charles Stack, co-founder and CEO of Flashstarts; Andrew Konya, co-founder and CEO of Remesh; and Tesia Thomas, founder of Zipr Shift Klos.

This forum will take an in-depth look at what’s working, and what’s not working in Ohio’s startup economy, drawing insight from panelists, founders, and the audience. The event will feature real-time audience feedback using the Remesh app, which allows audience members to answer open-ended questions and post them live, helping to facilitate a lively, informative examination of the region’s startup culture.

WKSU’s Startup Meetup will draw on the expertise of panelists and audience members to prioritize goals for the region’s startup community and examine the best ways to measure success as a region. The group will look at the recent TechStars report on Cleveland’s entrepreneurism and how it might apply to Akron and the region, and take a deep dive into data from the Kaufmann Foundation that shows Cleveland in last place among major cities in startup density.

Thanks to a grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, St. Clair and a team of Kent State University student interns have spent a year immersed in the culture of entrepreneurship in the region. Growing Ohio’s Startup Culture: An Exploradio Meetup brings together WKSU’s reporting and Northeast Ohio’s foremost thought leaders, stakeholders, policy makers, and entrepreneurs to highlight the needs and successes of the region’s business creation efforts.