Tribe.net. Local Connections Norm http://ClevelandCAUSE.tribe.net/thread/fb8191c3-93c5-4c8c-ba76-56e148da2065#1a8212be-0113-4cf3-8b6e-e7e73205300f 2004-02-02T11:16:40Z

I’m a native Clevelander who has co-located my company ICEarth in Cleveland and in San Ramon, California. Being based in an incubator in CA, I’ve identified a number of companies that would be wonderful assets to Northeast Ohio. I propose to co-locate at least five companies in both Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, and San Ramon, Northern California. It is worth exploring making this a formal sister region relationship, offering Cleveland entrepreneurs a door to California and California entrepreneurs their entrance into Cleveland. That certainly is not a condition of our further discussions. Here is a brief overview of the companies interested to co-locate in Cleveland, and some general assumptions and expectations: 1) Missing Lynx Systems (MLS) is an inventive computer science and engineering company with two significant products to deploy now, and a think tank of products in reserves. One product to deploy is Integrated Business Information System (IBIS), a general systems theory based enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite, designed to provide any size enterprise with SAP level functionality, but with better capabilities, at a fraction of the cost, overhead, complexity, and disruption. MLS’ other mature product is Kitten, a real-time, scalable, variable bandwidth, platform independent, peer-to-peer, intelligent, dynamically reconfigurable, self-addressing, token ring network device and protocol. You may visit http://missinglynxsystems.com/ to learn about their products and purpose. COO Mary Mason finds herself front and center in a DOMA legislation battle in Ohio, drawing much economic development, media and public attention to MLS. While her position is that she opposes this legislation, I think she has been so impressed by the support she has seen for her concerns, and the large number of calls and interviews and emails that she’s received from Ohioans, that she may well consider moving some operations to Cleveland, regardless of the immediate DOMA outcome. She certainly has nothing against Cleveland. Missing Lynx Systems would spin off IBIS into another company, and may base that in Cleveland – leading to dozens of programming jobs, and significant administrative and operations staffing – leading to 100s of jobs. Kitten would spin off as well, for which is needed many programmers and engineers, leading to manufacturing and sales and distribution of a significant software and hardware product – 100s of jobs, very quickly. Missing Lynx Systems could work in technology transfer with CASE Engineering and Computer Science departments, and with TIIME and CAMP, offering them all high value collaboration. That is just an introduction to what Missing Lynx Systems offers the community. 2) PUREmail seems to be the best spam and virus management solution on the market today, and they’d like to work in a community that will help them stay #1. Developed over several years, by CEO Raj Baronia, PUREmail already has customers and works great. MyDoom reminds us how important email and virus management is. PUREmail is in the press right now as one of the first applications to spot the MyDoom virus! See http://www.puremail.com. Raj has also developed an important Indian eCom portal called IndoLink, at http://www.indolink.com. His development company is called Genius, Inc., and is found at http://www.genius.net. PUREmail is a unique, timely product ready to grow in a nurturing environment. PUREmail runs on enterprise servers, allowing customers (generally employees of corporations) to access preferences over the Internet and configure their personal levels of filtering of email, so they only receive mail that interests them – all the other mail stays on the PUREmail server. A benefit of the architecture is PUREmail provides an archive of all email, meeting prudent and legal off-site 3rd party storage back-up requirements – and protecting valuable assets. A former NASA engineer, Raj is a leader in the global Indian technology world and knows how to develop fair-trade sourcing strategies using both local resources and programmers from his native country of India. His company will be a great, high profile asset to Cleveland’s portfolio. He’s receptive to moving the business there. He would base in Cleveland servers and administrators and other support staff, which should include designers, programmers, analysts, marketing and sales positions, and other technical specialists – all good paying jobs. 3) Telelase Communications Inc. is an engineering firm specialized in designing and implementing broadband wireless Free-Space Optics (FSO) and Radio Frequency (RF) links. Telelase provides customized wireless solutions for broadband backbone network access from 10 Mbps to 5 Gbps and has wireless solutions for organizations facing lack of cost-effective last mile access, and communications augmentation for disaster planning. Telelase’s FSO and RF solutions provide dedicated broadband carrier access for virtual private networks, Internet access, video, voice and quality of service guaranteed data links. Read more at http://telelase.com Their services are a perfect fit with OneCleveland and the fiber infrastructure there, in that there is significant fiber throughout the region but often still last mile issues. Telelase provides the most cost effective and valuable last mile solutions, including distributing the network into WiFi throughout the end customer facilities. They also provide Voice over Internet (VoIP) and broadband Internet access, with proprietary software managing all services. They supplement current efforts to make Cleveland a world-leader in wireless, bringing high purpose to OneCleveland’s efforts and offering Cleveland facilities, businesses and government competitive advantages. With good support in the community, Telelase will commit to make Cleveland its next and highest priority service territory and immediately begin installing networks for Cleveland businesses and facilities, creating technical and administrative jobs. They’ll base there any operations and administrative functions and staff that are cost effective. 4) iManuals Now, Inc., is "the world's largest on-line source for instruction manuals", and a fundamental B2C eCommerce business selling on-line manuals for 1,000s of products (e.g. VCRs, Camcorders) - they are operational, selling to individuals over the internet, and lining up retailers as subscription distributors (making counter sales to walk-in customers). See http://www.imanualsnow.com They’ve invested in their technology, so there is a lot under the front-end. They have the ability to protect a sole source position for a valuable, unique product representing 100s of brands and manufacturers – indicating strong opportunity for synergistic relationships – perfect partner for someone with high public traffic site, providing a B2C, service looking for another strong product, or for someone wanting webspace with a unique branded product to build upon. Manufacturer relationships and links are valuable. iManuals is seeking partners interested in B2C and consumer product eCommerce, to help define the best possible business model to develop in Cleveland – seeking innovative thinkers and doers. 5) ICEarth is currently based in San Ramon, California, but will always consider Cleveland home. While useful to have a presence and contract in the San Francisco area, ICEarth intends to grow in Cleveland. ICEarth provides subscription access to a datawarehouse of internet performance metrics – secure access to comparative analyses of benchmarks of website effectiveness, and access to best practices. See http://icearth.com/ ICEarth is deploying aspects of Missing Lynx Systems IBIS technology, enabling standardized, secure, open source public data management and infomediation services. Over a very short time, ICEarth will hire dozens of analysts, programmers, administrators, writers, managers and consultants – as multilingual as possible - we have a significant product to deliver and customers waiting to be served. ICEarth seeks in Cleveland a half-dozen strategic advisory board members and a half dozen board of directors members, and their favorable relations. All of our companies will need physical facilities. Missing Lynx Systems will need office, lab, engineering and manufacturing/assembly facilities expanding over a 12 to 24 month roll-out. The rest of us could start with a shared incubator, with multimedia lab, datacenter, meeting and presentation facility, like our incubator in San Ramon. Other companies are of course welcome – as many synergistic start-ups as manageable. Arrangements must be made for cost-effective transitional and visiting entrepreneurs housing, near the incubation area. It will be necessary for California (and other outside) staff to spend some time working in Cleveland, and for staff relocating there to have temporary accommodations while they find permanent housing – this may be combined with work space – all should have high bandwidth. Each co-locating company needs individual counseling on other benefits and services available to our businesses for moving to Cleveland, and we need local expertise to determine best ways to leverage opportunities, like back-to-work training, economic development zones, and buying facilities versus leasing. We need relations with entrepreneurial landlords, vendors and service providers, like accountants, lawyers, designers and developers – as much hand holding as possible. We each need inside advisors and board members, which also intermesh our businesses with the established business community and culture. We need honorary memberships in all the local trade organizations and associations, with the opportunity to present to the memberships, and access to free education and workshop services And we need to all work together to promote our shared objective, creating jobs in Northeast Ohio. To create jobs, Missing Lynx Systems, PUREmail, and Telelase will be looking for major corporate customers, and so will pursue good public relations and to be received in a community that thinks “spend at home”! All of us will expect to be embraced by vibrant local entrepreneurship and technology transfer communities. We cannot succeed if treated as outsiders by the local community. And the same level of attention we seek above for these companies should be made avaialble for all companies seeking to develop businesses in Cleveland, wherever they're from. Norm Roulet norm@icearth.com 1-925-866-4123

Norm 2004-02-02T11:16:40Z Norm http://ClevelandCAUSE.tribe.net/thread/fb8191c3-93c5-4c8c-ba76-56e148da2065#6c714139-a947-4878-a2e1-561018707d00 2004-02-18T01:43:41Z

I spoke today with a principle with Telelase, and they have determined the market in NEOhio for their services is probably very limited, and so question their ability to provide much economic impact there. They are definitely seeking customers for their last mile high speed high bandwidth wireless data solutions, which run from $50-80K turnkey, and they are very interested to develop their market in NEOhio, but they are not in a position to predict specific benefits to the community - to be determined. It would be worth having them speak with someone from OneCleveland, along the way - perhaps Cleveland is further along the wireless sophisitication curve that expected!

Norm 2004-02-18T01:43:41Z