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Bridge Builder
July 01, 2011
Summary: Michael Goldberg didn’t speak the local language when he signed on to teach English in rural South Africa. Or when he set out to give AOL a foothold in China. But one of his keys to success is recognizing what he doesn’t know, finding someone who can help and moving ahead. “I’m passionate about and energized by doing work overseas,” Goldberg says. “When you’re dropped upside down into a situation, and it’s chaos, for some people, that’s the most frightening thing in the world. And for some people, that’s the most exciting thing.” Goldberg, 41, a native Clevelander, launched the Bridge Investment Fund in 2005. The locally based venture capital firm invests in Israeli medical device companies — and tries to recruit them to work in Cleveland.
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Cleveland hopes to land command center for space research project
June 22, 2011
Summary: A newly formed nonprofit is vying to make Cleveland the command center for a project that would involve biomedical research on the International Space Station. The project would center on research in a microgravity environment, according to Jay Foran, senior vice president with Team NEO, a Northeast Ohio-based business attraction group. The research could be applied to the fields of life sciences, advanced energy, agriculture and the environment.
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Building the Israel-Ohio medical connection: Bridge Investment Fund
May 23, 2011
Summary: Bridge Investment Fund recently scored its biggest win — in the eyes of job-creation-conscious local investors, at least — when Israel-based portfolio company IceCure decided to establish its U.S. headquarters in Cleveland. That’s exactly what the Cleveland-based venture capital fund was designed to do when it was set up in 2005: Invest in Israeli medical device firms that would benefit from setting up operations in the Cleveland area as they look to break into the U.S. market, and boost job growth and economic activity in Northeast Ohio’s growing biomedical sector.
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Beachwood's SPR Therapeutics secures $250,000 JumpStart investment
April 26, 2011
Summary: A Beachwood company that has developed a patch designed to relieve pain has received a $250,000 investment from JumpStart Inc., a Cleveland-based nonprofit that assists and invests in area startups. The company, SPR Therapeutics LLC, has completed a series of studies that indicate its Smartpatch Peripheral Nerve Stimulation System works to relieve chronic pain. Results showed 84% of patients reported a significant reduction in pain after using the device for 30 days, and 40% were pain-free. After the 30-day period, 78% said pain relief continued.
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Fresh off Series A Fundraise, Thermalin Pushes for Trials Funding
April 05, 2011
Summary: Cleveland-based biotech company Thermalin Diabetes, on the heels of a successful 2011 Series A fundraise for around $3 million that included backers JumpStart Ventures and Massachusetts Medical Angels, will seek to complete another round of funding in 2011, CEO Richard Berenson told peHUB. Thermalin, which was founded in 2007 and develops next-generation insulin analogs for diabetes treatment, will take up to $12 million from outside investors again this year, as it seeks to expand its investor base and ramp up its insulin analogs for clinical approval trials and, ultimately, either a sale or licensing deal.
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Cleveland’s Signs of Renewal
April 01, 2011
Summary: On Saturday mornings when I was 11 or 12, my mother would drop me off at the Rapid Transit stop nearest our home in Pepper Pike, an outlying suburb of Cleveland. There, I would board a train for the 30-minute trip to an orthodontist’s office downtown. Despite the prospect of having my braces fiddled with, it was a trip I could hardly wait to take. From my seat on the train, nose pressed to the window, I was spellbound by the city to which I have lately returned.
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Ohio tax credit: Could expanded program boost jobs, investment?
March 30, 2011
Summary: An executive from a Northeast Ohio medical device startup is pushing a plan that would expand a popular tax credit in a move he says would lift investment and job creation in the state. Mike Haritakis, an executive vice president with Solon-based Thermedx, would like to see the state implement several tweaks to the Technology Investment Tax Credit (TITC), a program designed to mitigate the risk of investing in Ohio technology startups. Haritakis’ suggestions wouldn’t do much to change the structure of the TITC. Instead, they’d just build on what the tax credits are already designed to do. “These changes would open up a tremendous source of funding for small, early-stage companies and create a lot of jobs very quickly,” Haritakis said.
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IT specialists seizing on demand in health care
March 07, 2011
Summary: The Cleveland Clinic has begun mass-producing information technology companies to meet what Chris Coburn describes as a huge need in the health care field. Government pressure to get health care providers to reduce costs and to increase quality of care is creating “big opportunities” for IT companies that serve the health care business, said Mr. Coburn, executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the hospital system's technology commercialization arm.
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Irish medical device design company opens office near Cleveland Clinic
March 01, 2011
Summary: An Irish company that helps medical device companies design their products has opened a small office near the Cleveland Clinic. Creganna-Tactx Medical employs two business development specialists at its new office in the Clinic's Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center, an incubator designed to accelerate the development of companies creating cardiovascular technologies and other medical products. The office is expected to grow over time and eventually could have equipment that area companies could use to create prototypes of their products, said Tom Sudow, vice president of business attraction for Team NEO. The regional business attraction agency is helping the Clinic recruit tenants for the center, located at 10000 Cedar Ave.
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President Obama holds up economic efforts in Cleveland as national models
February 22, 2011
Summary: Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs are going to have a huge impact on America's future — and possibly some impact on its policies. President Barack Obama today told more than 300 members of the region's business community, many of them entrepreneurs, that efforts by small businesses and economic development groups in the region give him confidence that the United States can compete in an increasingly competitive global economy. President Obama, who visited Cleveland State University's Wolstein Center for the first of several Winning the Future Forums on Small Business, talked about some of his own ideas for boosting the country's economy, such as the possibility that the federal government could give tax breaks to individuals who invest in startup companies.
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