Shaker LaunchHouse Director Reflects on Big Year

Shaker LaunchHouse founding partner Dar Caldwell thinks the combination of entrepreneurship, educational resources, seed investments and networking under one Lee Road roof is on the right track after a year and a half of existence. Accomplishments in 2012 played a large role in forming that belief. 

Last year, LaunchHouse grew from 30 portfolio companies to 40. Caldwell estimates that the workspace and startup hub has been affiliated with nearly 200 companies when counting those who have and continue to work and/or run operations from the former auto dealership since its 2011 opening.

"There's been hundreds of events that have happened since we've been in here," he said, "from educational-type stuff, to networking to bringing big-time investors in.

"We even get excited about the increase in foot traffic. We talk to people like Georgio's Pizza or the gas station and they're like, 'we love this.' There's lot of people spending money in the city, and obviously jobs."

By this summer, companies that LaunchHouse invested in had raised more than $4 million in follow-on funding.

LaunchHouse kicked off its inaugural Accelerator program, in which 10 startups received $25,000 and completed a 12-week program. The participants presented their brands and concepts to packed room of investors from all at the LHX Showcase in November.

The state's ONEFund program awarded LaunchHouse a $200,000 grant to to support the Accelerator program. Throughout the year, the 23,000 square-foot LaunchHouse hosted events including a speaker series with an Israeli venture capitalist in June before partnering with Israeli Bonds and a Cleveland-area nonprofit benefit with San Francisco-based Yelp.

Caldwell said programming at LaunchHouse will be more frequent and varied this year. In the first two weeks of 2013, Priceline.com CEO Jeff Hoffman spoke to a group of entrepreneurs and the property hosted an improv show and concert with the Big Dog theatre troupe of Cleveland Heights.

LaunchHouse will host plenty of educational workshops for local students and networking events for young professionals in 2013. The Cleveland State University Monte Ahuja College of Business' Small Business Development Center and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law will hold a health care reform discussion on Jan. 25 at LaunchHouse.

Caldwell said he and the other five partners of LaunchHouse won't let all the programming get in the way of promoting and investing in the startups of Northeast Ohio.

"We cater very much to what's needed to make Cleveland a world-class entrepreneurial center so that companies stay here and actually have a chance to become successful," Caldwell said. "We're obsessed about that.

"We don't sleep at night because that's all we think about."