Ohio Deal Portal
A research letter on Ohio's early-stage companies, written for the people who fund them, hire from them, and partner with them.
ohiodealportal.com ↗I founded the Ohio Deal Portal, a research letter on early-stage companies across the state, and I work hands-on with companies in the stretch after people have proven they want a product and before the business behind it has caught up. That's where the manufacturing partner, the supply chain, the compliance paperwork, the first institutional customers, the team, and the next round of capital get sorted out.
Most of the last decade I spent building the systems around founders. I ran startup programs for the Global Entrepreneurship Network in dozens of countries, including three years planning the Entrepreneurship World Cup and a State Department program in post-conflict regions, chaired a global angel network, and helped grow Global Entrepreneurship Week in Ohio from one event to twelve cities. At BRITE Energy Innovators I did diligence and portfolio work with clean energy startups, which is where I learned how to spot a credible company.
Before that I built VR clinical training at BioflightVR with Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Duke. In New York I worked on a telehealth initiative with NYC Health + Hospitals and on tele-education programs with Touro College. Back in Cleveland I co-founded Greyt Culture, a run of concerts and talks on energy, transit, healthcare, and venture capital. These days I'm also helping Edison's Pizza Kitchens take its Take & Bake line from a restaurant kitchen into grocery.
I studied industrial-organizational psychology at Kent State and worked as a research assistant in four labs. In the Jasnow, Riccio, and Fountain labs I helped run behavioral neuroscience experiments on fear, memory, stress, and learning. In the Delahanty lab I worked on a pediatric trauma study run out of the Akron Children's Hospital emergency department, recruiting and assessing families after a child's injury and running 12-week follow-ups. That's where I learned quantitative analysis and how to design, set up, and run experiments, including in a clinical setting.
Over the years I've worked with hospital systems like Cleveland Clinic, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and Duke; universities like Case Western Reserve and Kent State; the U.S. State Department, the World Bank, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; corporate partners like Wells Fargo, DoorDash, and KKR; Ohio institutions like JobsOhio, JumpStart, and the Cleveland Foundation; and a long list of angel networks, founders, artists, and local restaurants.
A research letter on Ohio's early-stage companies, written for the people who fund them, hire from them, and partner with them.
ohiodealportal.com ↗Helping the brand scale its Take & Bake line into grocery: choosing the co-packer, writing the food safety program, and making sure the product gets worked on the shelf.
edisonspizzakitchens.com ↗