Region tries again for state funds for startups
Dayton coalition’s proposal would help regional entrepreneurs.
If approved, the money would be used to support entrepreneurs in an eight-county region.
Dayton region officials are once again trying to convince the state to restore funding for entrepreneurs that was lost in 2015 after the Dayton Development Coalition was unable to resolve concerns over how effectively the money was being spent.
“Unfortunately we lost this funding two years ago. I’m hopeful we can get this funding back so that we can get our startup community these necessary dollars,” State Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, said Tuesday.
Antani said the region needs the money to compete with Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, all of which get the state funding for entrepreneurs.
The Ohio Third Frontier Commission on Wednesday will consider a proposal for funding submitted by The Entrepreneurs Center (TEC), a technology accelerator and business incubator in Dayton. The coalition did not apply for the money but is supportive of TEC’s application and confident it will be approved, said Jeff Hoagland, president and chief executive of the coalition.
“Our Accelerant team will continue to work with TEC and the regional start-up community to support local business growth and job creation,” Hoagland said.
If approved the money would be used to support entrepreneurs in an eight-county region that includes Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Preble, Clark, Champaign, Shelby and Darke counties. It will provide mentors, help
entrepreneurs build business plans and find employees, connect them with customers, assist them with intellectual property issues, offer educational programming and other help. TEC President Scott Koorndyk said he’s applied for $3.6 million in state funds — an amount that would have to be matched with an equal amount of cash and in-kind services already pledged by local partners. The money would be available through 2018, a shorter time-frame than proposedin his unsuccessful 2016 application for $6 million. In 2016 an independent evaluator recommended that the state not fund The Entrepreneurs Center’s proposal, which also was to be matched by another $6 mil
lion locally and would have lasted through 2019. The evaluator said the proposal “lacks emphasis on resources and relationships to be able to support high-potential firms” and had a “notable lack of health-related stakeholders.”
After t he Third Fron- tier Commission took no
action on the proposal at its December meeting, representatives of the Dayton and Toledo regions were
allowed to re-submit the proposals that are being consid
ered Wednesday, said Lisa Colbert, spokeswoman for
the Ohio Development Ser- vices Agency.
The state agency adminis- ters the voter-approved Third Frontier bond funding. The program targeting business
start-ups has been rebranded as the Entrepreneurial Ser- vices Provider Program. It
was formerly known as the Entrepreneurial Signature Program (ESP). Koorndyk said the state
revised its request in a way that he believes will make funding more likely because
previous proposals were measured against standards for an existing program, even though the TEC had not previously run the local effort.
“(They will) treat us as a new ESP that is bringing new partners and new programs to the table,” Koorndyk said.
He said it’s possible that only a portion of the money will be approved.
The Third Frontier funding had been provided to the Dayton region since 2007 through the coalition, a public-private partnership that is the western regional arm of the state’s privatized economic development engine, JobsOhio. The coalition operates Accelerant, which pro
vides tech startups with funds and assistance.
In 2015 the Third Frontier Commission rejected the coalition’s request for $1.8 million in funding for entrepreneurs. At the time the money was rejected, the coalition had let more than $2 million in previously approved money go unspent. The rejection made theeightcounty region the only one in the state not receiving new state funds to assist technology startups.
“We are the home of innovation, the birthplace of aviation,” Antani said. “I don’t think we should have lost that money in the first place.” In the 2015 funding round,
the evaluators identified multiple weaknesses with the
coalition’s entrepreneurship program, including failure to raise enough funding from
the private sector, limited client services and a lack of formal commitments from “deal flow” sources such as universities and research labs.