|
You are entering the E-zone
COVINGTON - "Five years ago, to be honest with you, it was about culture," Casey Barach says. "A lot of people looked at us like we were crazy."
Five years ago, Barach had left a downtown Cincinnati online company to become the first executive director of the Madison E-Zone, a small-business incubator wedged into a building atop a Fifth Third bank branch at Sixth and Madison.
Today, the Fifth Third branch is gone, but the incubator still is there with about 20 tenants.
During those five years, it's helped 82 companies that have drawn $29.4 million in investment into the region and created more than 300 jobs.
A Northern Kentucky University study says the E-Zone has added $51 million to the local economy and has spurred another $14 million in other wages.
That's led to new plans for Barach, who still is one of only three staff people at the E-Zone. Supporters envision a regional One-Stop Entrepreneur Center for all of Northern Kentucky. It would cost up to $5 million, and they hope to get some state money in the next biennial budget cycle.
The One-Stop Center is just one plank of Vision 2015, the blueprint for Northern Kentucky's future drawn out by a group of community leaders over the last year. That has E-Zone looking to get more regional, with services available to companies in more counties.
All of this looks great on a brochure. Frankly, that's where a lot of tech-company support programs look best. Unless it leads to real economic activity, and real economic activity in this region, it doesn't mean a whole lot.
But the E-Zone has meant a lot to Jon Vreeland. He's one of two founders who joined in 2003 to form FotoFlix, a photo-sharing Internet site. Customers can upload photos and use the site to create a slideshow or presentation with different themes.
Three months ago, Vreeland and co-owner Jaisen Mathai moved out of the E-Zone across Madison Avenue to their own 1,200-square-foot offices.
They have big plans, most prominently a next-generation site called Photagious.
Financially, FotoFlix hasn't yet reached the break-even point. The E-Zone provided a home for a year but also provided two $25,000 grants and invaluable comfort and advice, Vreeland says. He and Mathai already had the software, but the business side was a challenge.
"As far as us taking those first crucial steps like quitting our jobs and knowing we'd have an office that didn't cost an arm and a leg, their help was tremendous," Vreeland says. "What we wanted to do was get to the point where we are now, kind of revamped, really looking into marketing. They really helped us identify what we needed to go after."
One thing about entrepreneurs is that they come in all shapes and sizes. There are technical types, such as the FotoFlixowners, who come with a product in hand. Others come with money but no developed idea. Others come with passion and management expertise but little else.
That's why the landscape has changed, and that culture that Barach encountered five years ago has morphed to the point where incubators are not enough. What entrepreneurs need is a network of resources, available in person or online, all the time. If it's not available in Northern Kentucky, it will be available in Cincinnati or Minneapolis or San Diego, or even Shanghai, China.
Today, it's all about partnerships, the kind of links that the E-Zone hopes to create with its One-Stop Center.
Five years ago, it was crazy to start a small-business incubator. Today, it would be crazy to stop there.
|