Entrepreneur Roadmap Creates Pathway For Northern Ohio Tech Startups
Entrepreneurs know that inspiration can strike at any time of the day or night. But how do you take a potentially world-changing idea from the back of a napkin and make it a reality? Enter JumpStart’s Entrepreneur Roadmap, a process that guides ambitious entrepreneurs growing a tech business.
“The roadmap essentially came about as a tool to help entrepreneurs better understand where they are in the development of their tech business and identify things that they should consider working on that helps them get on a path of business viability,” says Chris Smith, JumpStart’s deal flow manager.
Here’s what you need to know about the Entrepreneur Roadmap.
What is the Entrepreneur Roadmap?
This roadmap is a resource/process to help guide entrepreneurs as they take an idea from concept to launch and beyond. It helps innovators think more critically about their idea and arms them with knowledge and resources to successfully navigate the entrepreneurial journey.
Who is this built for?
The roadmap is especially designed for tech entrepreneurs—this can be an individual with a tech-enabled solution to an everyday problem or a developer, inventor or engineer working around the clock to bring a service or product to market. The roadmap can be accessed online by entrepreneurs working on their businesses independently or used to compliment 1-on-1 business advising from JumpStart or its many network partners. The roadmap represents JumpStart’s and the network’s philosophy on the steps needed to get a startup to launch based on decades of advising tech entrepreneurs.
How do I use the roadmap?
The roadmap can be used any time of day (or night) to help you, with tools, templates, articles and videos for step-by-step growth starting with your idea—what we call the ideation phase—all the way through product launch and onto scaling, or the acceleration phase. “We’re really trying to get entrepreneurs in the mindset of the business itself,” Smith says. “The roadmap helps them identify (or see) a path that they’re on in terms of the work that they need to do in developing the business—and helps them think about things that they weren’t considering before.”
What does this mean for Northern Ohio?
The region has the creativity and resources to be a national innovation hub similar to peer cities like Pittsburgh and St Louis. Additionally, we have regional assets unmatched by other communities including our healthcare sector, cultural institutions and philanthropic support.
If we support tech entrepreneurship locally, we will be able to build economic growth for the region, attracting talent and accelerating opportunities for current residents.