The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: If we’re able to bring in outside dollars in support of one our companies, that’s a validation. Somebody else evaluated and decided to put his chips down on the opportunity that we cultivated and developed; that is a validation that we’re doing good. So, that’s one of the ways in which we measure our success. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are the benefits of being a Kairos Society fellow?

Ankur: For example, one of the most exciting things we did, this past September, was we took 50 of our fellows to China with Alibaba.com. We took them to look at U.S.–China trade opportunities. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: We help to organize a network of angel investors in this rural area. We provide them with a professional fund manager and help them to determine their offering to each other, the agreements they have, and the processes by which they will evaluate companies and invest in them. That is a huge contribution to Appalachian Ohio. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Ankur: The goal to take some of these students who would have otherwise gone the traditional corporate route and get them to embrace this idea that with a community of like-minded peers, knowing they have the support and guidance of top mentors from around the world, [they can] build these companies and make an impact. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: One of the things about the kinds of companies that we uncover and work with is that they are in need of a great deal of help.

Rather than a large, urban, metropolitan area where a company that is very early stage may come with a sophisticated management [team] that knows the world of technology commercialization, the world of equity capital, and how to put an execution team behind an idea, we bump into the raw ideas.

We need to wrap around them the human talent needed to accelerate them. We work with companies a long time. One of our early investments from our fund we worked with for about two years before they actually won their first investment. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Ankur: Today, in this interconnected world, you can have a Chinese entrepreneur start a company with an American entrepreneur. You can take the best of both countries to create a single company that’s inherently multinational and multicultural.

This product can be, from day one, sold in two completely different markets without having to replicate all your resources because it’s not an American company trying to enter a foreign market and having to re-do everything from scratch, or vice versa. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

John: Another example might be developing a prototype or, in the case of a really early stage company, protecting the intellectual property through obtaining patent assistance. So, all of those are things that are needed to take risk out of an opportunity. They require resources that often a pre-revenue, early stage innovator does not have. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

In this interview I am talking to John Glazer, director of TechGROWTH Ohio. This Athens-based, state-supported program has offered resources and funding to early stage, technologically innovative companies in the state of Ohio since 2007. >>>