All right, Ms.

Dixon.

Good morning, Mayor, Commissioners.

So this morning, we have uh an exciting update, um, particularly around our uh strategic work with small business, entrepreneurial and small business development.

You know, the city of Dayton is a city of small businesses, and 80 percent of our economic growth comes from our existing businesses.

So we work obviously very hard with those existing businesses, small businesses to help them scale when they are ready to help them with investments and these um to do that.

And so these public private partnerships are really important in the landscape of economic development.

What's also really important is entrepreneurial development and facilitating a strong ecosystem that serves and supports those entrepreneurs, whether they're baking in their kitchen, um, you know, maintaining their landscaping equipment in their garage or starting a completely different entrepreneurial um uh endeavor with technology, etc.

We have um a rich ecosystem, and um Scott Korndike, as the president of Entrepreneur Center, has been driving these missions and visions um for many years now, and um getting some great traction, particularly with the expansion of the hub at the arcade.

And so he's gonna walk through uh the scope of work that that they provide.

Um we have long time been an investor and supporter of the entrepreneur center and their work because of the importance of that entrepreneurial strategy.

And um, so I'll turn it over to Scott Korndike to lead us through the presentation.

Thank you, City Manager.

Uh Commission, um let me get you begin by saying thank you.

Um I don't think you can overstate the importance of the city.

The city leadership in the last 10 years of the entrepreneur.

You just can't.

Um, yes, we as a community and as an ecosystem have gone on to do one of the things, and we're gonna talk about that.

The work really started 10 years ago when the entrepreneur center, the city, and other organizations learned to get out of our own way.

And learn to work as a community, learn to work in our respective spaces.

And honestly, that was driven by the city.

It was driven by the city manager, it was driven by the city commission.

It was driven by the confidence that the city had in the organizations inside of the community.

So at the outset, there's nothing you remember from this presentation today, other than this.

Thank you.

The leadership, I have think has been tremendous.

Uh, and that the residents of Dayton and the region have been well served by the leadership of the commission.

Commissioner, I've had the pleasure of working with all city managers.

I had the pleasure of working with managing commissioners, a couple mayors, um, and the leadership from the small business perspective is tremendous.

So thank you at the LSAP for that.

One little uh quick note.

My presentation views the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the regional perspective.

And the reason I think it's important in standing in front of the city commission to talk regionally is because our region can't be the region it is without the urban.

It just can't.

And so I will do everything I can to when I give you a number or give you a total or I give you an impact to bring it to the city.

We produce a report for the city manager and for the commission each year, which which implies in very specific ways exactly what we've done in the city.

But I thought it might be helpful just to give you the grander vision because that's how you all you know think, and that's how you operate the commission, the grander vision of the region, how important the city is uh to the region and the ecosystem of the region.

So forgive me for that.

It is a regional presentation, but I will I will bring it to the to the city level.

A pretty aggressive agenda, and I want to be respectful of your time.

I threw everything in here, and I can go any direction you want.

Um, I don't expect that you're gonna be particularly interested in the capital access strategies you were employing.

I don't expect that you're gonna care a great deal about what we're doing from an operating perspective, the budgets, but I want to be an open book.

I want to be totally transparent with you as to how we use our money, where we get our money from, how we deploy those resources.

So this is a lot.

So we'll go quickly, but please ask any questions.

If I'm going down a path you don't want to go down, correct me, point me in a better direction.

Um, but I'm excited to do this because it's the first chance I've had in in this current commission to give you that 30,000 foot perspective.

Questions before I begin at all?

Anything any of the commissioners specifically would like me to cover as I followed.

All right.

So let me begin by the regional framework.

I have had the pleasure, as I said, of working with this commission and the city manager for a number of years, and you've seen these evolutions.

And I just want to foot stomp what I said earlier.

The belief in the entrepreneur center, the partnership with the city has been transformational for us.

We originally were an incubator.

We were on 714 East Monument Avenue, as you might recall.

Uh 1998, we were incorporated, 2000.

We opened that building, which has now, as you know, been repurposed.

We were an incubator.

Incubator implies that we focused on what happened inside our four walls.

If you were inside those four walls, we incubated you just like a little egg.

We incubated you, you're supposed to hatch and go out into the city.

In about 2015 or 2016, we started focusing on commercialization primarily because we know what Mr.

Commissioner Joseph does for a living.

Um, and we needed to pull people from the Air Force Base.

We have this massive engine, and it gives yourself massive engine.

We've got to bring value to the urban core from the work that goes on in the Air Force Base.

So we focus on commercialization.

About three years ago, we shifted that to innovation.

We did that for a specific region.

The first reason and primary reason is because we support a lot more than technology entrepreneurs.

We support entrepreneurs all the time.

In fact, by volume, we have more what we affectionately call mainstream entrepreneurs in our portfolio than we do technology entrepreneurs.

So to say we were focused on commercialization implies to the bakery or implies to the hair salon, or implies to the service station, or implies to the consultant.

Well, you're not commercializing anything.

Um, so our pivot was really innovation.

Every one of our entrepreneurs at some level are innovative.

Again, the evolution of the organization from focusing on the inside of the building, 714 to now at the arcade, really a center of gravity for the entrepreneurial community, intentional, focused on innovation.

Our vision, therefore, had to change as well.

Our vision now is we want to be leading regional and national center of excellence.

We take that very seriously.

Um, I can tell you unequivocally, the city of Dayton, the work we do from an entrepreneurial perspective in partnership with the city at the entrepreneur center is viewed as a national model.

It's especially true as a model of how a city and a community can embrace a research, primary research facility, like the terms research.

We are viewed as the subject matter experts.

In fact, we are computer forces accelerated, which we'll talk about in a moment.

So we are local by design, national in impact.

And again, we take that very seriously.

We have a national impact, but we've local economic development organization.

We live to serve the city of Dayton, the constituency that you all have in the city of Dayton and the region.

That is our primary focus.

We've got national programs that frankly help us fund.

So what we do.

Our mission statement, we've simplified it a lot.

It's getting more simple.

Uh, in our upcoming board meeting, we're gonna even simplify our three-four own mission a little bit more.

At the end of the day, we focus on progress and prosperity through entrepreneurship.

That's all we do.

Progress and prosperity, entrepreneurship.

Major focus, technology focus.

If you're an entrepreneur, we as an organization exist to serve your interests.

Very simple mission.

Our evolution, for those of you who've kind of watched the organization, as I said, founded in 1998, gone through a number of evolutionary steps.

Um, but the biggest evolutionary step we as an organization had was moving to the city.

And again, I can't thank this commission and the city for your vision, uh, patience, the foresight it had to focus on and provide resource to the arcade so that we can turn it into what it is now.

We have 180 businesses working in that space now.

Those 180 businesses have about 900 employees that come to work every day in our space.

The University of Dayton and Sinclair Community College are hosting about 40 classes each week in that space.

So there's another 450 or 500 students that are walking through those doors every day, coming into the arcade, into the hub, working with our entrepreneurs.

We're now seeing this beautiful synergy between higher education, students in a design class or an engineering class, who are first interns for our startups in our space.

So you're seeing that beautiful sort of synergistic relationship that we've all tried to create.

And of course, we've been supportive of the hotel and all of the work going on in the arcade.

It is nice to know that we see the finish line and we see a lot of energy there.

So that's a huge evolution for us.

I'm going to update you on the impact number, but we hit a billion dollars of economic impact since 2017.

Really a little bit more detail in a moment.

But at the end of 2024, about 825 million dollars of impact since 2017.

That's primarily in the technology space.

And you can see an example of the kind of companies that we have in our portfolio.

But the economic impacts that we're driving through the community, through the region are extraordinary.

The rule of thumb I would give you is as you look at when I give you a regional knocker, the regional driven in the city.

I'll touch on the more specific metrics as we go through.

But the city is seeing $650 million of economic index in 2017.

Right.

I do want to give you a regional framework for the work that we do, but building back to what I was saying about the importance of the city and the vision that the city has had that enables us to create a strategy which is far more reaching and just important to the city reaches out into our whole community.

You have had Bruce Katz join the commission and join the city and thinking about city strategies.

Bruce Katz has built a, I think an elegant sort of model for innovation.

And it's this three-part model.

There's economic assets, there's networking assets, there's physical assets.

The Dayton region and the city of Dayton is blessed with all three.

Economic assets, including Right Path or Universities, networking assets, organizations like the Entrepreneur Center, MBAC, all of these organizations that exist to serve entrepreneurs in the community.

Soon IBROC to support the community and these great physical assets, the arcades specifically, other buildings in the in the urban core.

You put those things together, and you have something.

And that's really we've been operating under this strategy that we want to amplify economically working physical assets.

Want to put those together.

We happen to believe, and you'd expect me to say this small business is the glue that holds that sort of strategy together.

It's also true that big business does the same.

But for us, we're focused on creating a strategy for the city of Dayton and for the region that takes advantage of all of those assets, puts them together, works in concert with each other to amplify the voices of our citizens.

I can't ignore the fact that Red Patterson Air Force Base is in that backyard.

Obviously, that is a huge economic driver.

You all know that better than I do.

But what people tend to forget is the city of Dayton is also an economic development driver.

And so we believe that we've got to work in concert.

The urban core has to serve the larger region, the region has to serve the urban core.

And so we try to be a bridge as small businesses and as an economic development organization.

We try to be a bridge between urban core and right pattern.

How do we do that?

It's really commercialization technologies.

It's really finding opportunities for people who work on a civilian floor for military.

As they think about a second career or a final career, they have a lay a place to have a place to take a technology and develop it.

They have another step in their career.

We try to amplify the hub and use the hub to serve right path.

Every two weeks, right?

Patterson Air Force Base hosts a collider in the arcade.

And so you have at any given time 30 or 40 uniform and civilian members of Air Force Research Labs coming to the hub.

They're engaged in downtown, engaged in conversations about downtown.

So we're trying to be a bridge really to connect those huge economic engines.

We are also a larger bridge.

We're also connected to the larger Ohio innovation.

A bit of an eye chart, but let me just say that we are joined by four other organizations in our state.

The state has been very smart through multiple administrations, sort of a bipartisan support for a series of programs, which we'll talk about, that allow us to do really important work to connect our urban core and our region to the larger state of Ohio and drive economic growth and economic development.

And you're seeing billions and billions and billions of dollars of economic development.

I prepared a briefing yesterday.

Over the course of 2017 to 2024, 15 billion dollars of economic impact has been driven by those five organizations.

Again, it's a connected ecosystem that lets us support companies in Cleveland because of the assets we have in the city, because of our manufacturing assets, for example, or because of our Air Force Research Laboratory S.

So it connects the urban core into that larger state ecosystem and creates something which we think is really unique.

Um I also do want to highlight, however, the importance of the city to what we're trying to do, and that is to drive non-dilutive investment in small businesses.

So if you've spent any time with me seeing this chart before, only have so many jokes online with these slides.

This is one slide I use over and over and over again.

Um, if you look at since 2015 to 2021, small business innovative research, and I'm not even sure what STTR stands for.

Uh Sidder and Center.

These are research contracts that the Air Force lets into small businesses.

If you look at the state of Ohio, 2015 to 2021, 671 million dollars of research contracts were awarded into the state of Ohio.

The data MSA got 46% of that, and the city confines of the city got five percent of that.

There is no urban core in the state of Ohio that is higher performance than the city in 2015 to 2021.

And by the way, 2021 is the last date we have the full data set.

Okay, personal data sets.

Um, it tells the same story, but I wanted to give you the complete data set that we had.

2015 to 2021.

City is leading all municipal municipalities in driving federal investment in the ecosystem.

Point being we're connecting the research that's going on at the Air Force Research Laboratories into the urban core.

Where do you see that primarily?

You're walking and you're meeting small business.

Think about Webster Street Station, they've got that street, think about battle site technologies, mile two, RJR, kind of that Webster Street station area is where we have been as companies have graduated from our work, they've been moving into that space.

And so a lot of that is concentrated in those kind of companies.

Questions.

Okay, okay.

So let me give you a sense of the programs that we run.

I'm very proud of our team.

We are a team that will end 2025 with about 27 members full months.

Uh we'll have another 20 or so part-time members of our staff, um, and we're very proud of the work that they do.

Very proud of our mission again to focus on growing progress and prosperity.

Um we have a very diverse staff that's really important to me and my team.

I'll talk about that in some detail in a moment.

Um, but I will simply say we look like the community we search, and we're very contentional.

We are very fortunate to have the kind of partners that we have.

Chief among those, of course, is the city of Dayton.

Um, but we have been very fortunate to increasingly engage our corporate partners the work that we're doing.

If you went through and invited me to these this chair five years ago, certainly 10 years ago, I would have said, and I've said publicly, one of the challenges Dayton has is that contrary to maybe the three Cs.

We don't have a large corporate culture, which embraces a small business culture.

Now, part of that is a numbers game, and you don't have a huge number of large corporate headquarters.

There's not as much money to put into the small business community, but we've been working diligently to try to engage our large corporate partners in support of entrepreneurs.

One of the ways we're doing that is by being valuable to those corporate partners.

If you're valuable to the corporate partners as they think about internal innovation, as they think about managing assets, as they think about engaging with the community, we finally suddenly become much more interested in small businesses that are going to go around.

So we're focused on engaging these corporate culture, corporate community in both support of the economic development ecosystem in support of the small business ecosystem, but also in support of their own innovation amount of work.

So very fortunate to have uh these kind of partners.

And again, just to go back to you know, founding certainly 2015, we had two of those partners.

So we've really focused on becoming a member of a community, reaching deeply into the communities.

We do everything you'd expect us to do, uh, from providing business advice to providing entrepreneurs and residents to working through an IP strategy through providing support to small businesses that are going after government contracts, SBR, STTR contracts, acquisition contracts, um, everything that you would expect a full service innovation center to do, we try to do.

We don't do it, we make sure that we make a warm handoff to partners in the community.

We don't believe in saying no to anybody, we don't say no to anyone.

At the very least, you're gonna be here.

This is the right person.

We're gonna walk in there, we'll make a warm reduction.

We're gonna make sure that that experience is positive.

More often than not, yes, we can help, and here's how we can have it.

I don't need to talk about the space.

You guys admitted it, read it, and made some very different decisions on it.

Again, I would say just thank you for that.

You enliven a space, which we all believe in.

We all thought was really powerful.

Um, but man, it looked it was not great, and now it is the envy of organizations across the country.

We have startup week going on this week.

So even as we speak, there are about 800 entrepreneurs at the hub right now, walking through workshops and programs.

We've got a number of guests from out of town, keynote speakers and the like, and over and over and over and here into the same space like that.

So Data Ohio is definitely on that for the way that the city has supported the entrepreneur system.

We don't have any specific funds.

We don't operate a venture fund, we don't operate direct investment.

We've done that a little bit by intent and a little bit, but just by circumstance.

We do have a small rotunda fund.

That fund is closed.

We opened that fund about three years ago.

That fund was really focused on underserved entrepreneurs who just needed a little help because they began the process of being bankable.

Um, you have to have trailing revenue, you've got to have assets, traditional financing is challenging for entrepreneurs and certainly underserved entrepreneurs.

So we formed a rotunda fund to just provide a little bridge fund really to help those entrepreneurs prepare for more formal bank loans or other investments.

Um, we've made seven investments, five of those have exited.

Uh we're underwater a little bit transparently.

We haven't made our money back for our investors yet.

Um very proud of the companies that we have.

What we have though done is an aggregated individuals together into what we call EC agents.

Historically, investors that wanted to participate in an angel fund left the city.

They went to Columbus, whether it was at Columbus Funds, or they went to Indiana or formalized angel networks.

Um, we didn't like that.

It didn't make sense to us, so we formed these angels program.

Then we have now about 60 local angels.

We just had another five signals, about 60 local angel investors are looking at small business opportunities, both technology and traditional business opportunities.

We have them look at these uh companies, they need generally 10 to 75, maybe 100,000 investment in the company.

So the angel network is activated in the in the city and the region, really for the first time.

So we're excited about the ability of those angels to bring capital to early stage businesses.

We are looking to open a local fund.

I promise I will not be back in front of you asking for any money for that.

We promise.

Um, I do at the very end of this deck have some information about our vision for the local fund.

Happy to go into it, maybe beyond the scope of today's conversation, but I wanted you to have it.

We do think a local fund is important.

We do think the ability to make our own decisions about early stage capital is important to control our own destiny.

And really, what I mean by controlling our own destiny is being the place that there's loyalty.

That first source of capital often ends up being where my people talk about you know we moved to Silicon Valley.

I took a round invested a million dollars, and I had to move to Silicon Valley, had to move to Boston, had to move to Chicago.

We want to have that same conversation, but we want to say your first money, your substantive money came in, it came from dating Ohio.

It came from local investors in Dayton, Ohio.

There's no reason for you to leave this community.

Your loyalty must and should be here.

So we believe in a local fund.

Probably, uh, if I'm fortunate enough to be invited back in front of you in 26, we probably have more about that.

We're actively engaging in investors right now and sort of testing what we've got our pose in the water seeing how much money might be listed.

Part of our deal flow engine is significant.

Again, when I look at regional numbers, the easy math of all of you in the in the commission is taking about 65% of this, and that's what the city is contributing to what's going on within the entrepreneur center.

We get about 400 inquiries a year.

Main street businesses, businesses that don't have a technology core.

We have about 25 different events every year.

We have about 25 new business starts that come out every year.

We have a huge book of business, if you will.

Huge a huge portfolio of clients.

We've been working with that every year.

When you think about technology businesses, we generally get about 20 clients a year.

When we say clients, that is not say we're talking to 20 companies that end up being our portfolio.

We've seen 95 or so in our portfolio, 60 new opportunity technology companies a year, of those 60, about 20.

We don't say we can't help you.

We help them through the process of getting ready to be put into the portfolio.

But when I say in the portfolio, I don't believe in.

I talked to Matt, if I may, just to be you know, to bring it to a personal level.

I talked to Matt.

Matt said he's interested.

He's not a client now.

No, you're not.

I haven't done anything for you.

So we count the client when we start to deliver services to that company.

We count the client who weren't actually meaningfully making a difference.

You didn't just ring me up and I say, ah, I've got another client and it looks good on the report to the city of the city commissioners.

You got hundreds of clients.

Clients are people that were actually actively helping.

So very significant.

If I would have stood in front of you 10 years ago, it would have looked probably more like 30 or 40 main street businesses, and it probably would look like four or five techniques.

The community is just different.

Ecosystem is just different.

And again, the city can't be fun.

Our industries are exactly what you'd expect.

You could overlay the Air Force Research Laboratories directorate structure on this, and you'd hit it almost perfectly.

Software and IT, that's the information directorate.

That's actually in Rome, New York, but a lot of that goes on as uh Commissioner Joseph does goes on in Dayton.

Um, so software and IT drives a lot of what we do, advanced materials, it's the materials and manufacturing directory, sensors, the sensors directorate, biomedical, 7-Eleven human 7-Eleventh human performance manufacturing, manufacturing directorate, life sciences again, 7-Eleventh Energy is tucked up under aerospace systems.

So it shouldn't surprise you.

People are leaving service, people are saying we come out of the Air Force Research Lab and do something else.

They're starting companies and they're taking what they know.

And so we're capitalizing on that.

IT without question remains our highest growth area.

It is also diversity inclusion is really important to us in 2024.

54% of our portfolio of clients are women founders.

47% are minority founders, 11% are veteran founders.

You're gonna hear me talk about our small business development center in a moment.

You look at our SBDC process well more than 60% of our portfolio of clients.

We the entrepreneur center have adopted three years ago a very formal diversity inclusion fund.

It requires diversity of staff, it requires diversity on our board, it requires diversity in our supplier network, and it fosters diversity in our clients.

So again, I said it earlier.

We want to look like the community we serve.

We want to hold ourselves to the standards that we would expect other people to have for themselves.

And so we want to make sure that when we're picking suppliers for our technology or non-technology businesses, they represent the community.

We want to make sure that we as a staff look like the community we serve.

Our board looks like the community we serve.

We measure that specifically every year.

We had a diversity inclusion committee on our board.

Uh that has a representative who sits outside of my specific.

I gotta say this the right way.

That person is on my staff, but reports to the board because the board needs to have transparency into how we operate our organization, can't be shielded by anything that I say or do.

They need to be able to say why is the company doing this?

Why is the why is the program making these decisions from a supplier perspective?

We thought it was appropriate that that not be centered on me, that we centered a staff member who reports directly to that board.

So we take this very seriously.

I will say we are not changing our language.

We have a diversity inclusion committee.

It's going to remain the diversity inclusion committee.

That is a committee that City Manager has been really instrumental in reinforcing and enforcing.

So thank you, Shelly, for your leadership there.

Again, I don't want to overstate it.

It's just hugely important.

Startup week going on right now.

I would love to welcome you all to Startup Week.

If you get a chance, I would love to host you today, is the second day of startup week.

It's at about 800 entrepreneurs sitting over at the hub right now.

And we have a watchpad launch pad series where every month we're focusing on talent and we're focusing on companies and we're trying to bring energy to the community.

So we start that in April, it goes through September.

September's the capstone start week.

About 30,000 members who get uh members who get our newsletters.

So a huge reach, well outside of the city of Dayton, well outside of the region.

But trying to amplify those voices of the companies and amplify the voices that we have in the community.

Stop there for a moment.

Any questions?

Just one, if I could.

And that is uh you mentioned local funds, which I'd love to hear.

Yeah.

And just out of curiosity, can you ballpark how much it would take to get started?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the question of how much it would take to get started really is a question of what impact you want to have.

So if we all put in, you know, chipped into the proverbial tin cup, and in this room we were able to raise a million dollars.

Most of those early investments are going to be two to three hundred thousand dollars.

You're going to touch three companies.

Usually, when you run a fund like that, you deploy about 75% of your capital, you reserve 25% for follow-on investments.

So you're really talking about $750,000, maybe two investments.

It's not a lot of impact.

For those companies, it's huge, but not a lot of impact.

So direct answer to your question, we think a five million dollar fund is really necessary to have the kind of impact.

We would love to do a 10 million dollar fund.

That will require transparently institutional support.

That's going to require our universities to be involved, it's going to require our corporate partners to be involved.

As you all know, Dayton, the region is a community certainly significant resource.

So we think $5 million minimum, $10 million optimal.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

A very quick overview of programs that we run, SBDC program.

If there is a program that all of US city commissioners should take ownership of and should take a great deal of pride in, it's the SBDC.

The state came to us about three years ago and said, We love what you're doing.

Will you become a regional SBDC?

We said yes as long as the primary focus can remain city of game.

So through the generosity and the commitment of this commission, your money, if you will, the contract that we have with you goes into our SBDC.

It funds the seven people that we have working with mainstream businesses every day.

It funds some of what we do from a technology perspective, but as I'll show you later, we have other resources for that.

What you need to know is these dollars are leveraged by our relationship with the city.

So every dollar that you provide to us, we get at least another dollar from the state.

So every dollar that you give us, we're able to double.

That lets us leverage state money.

So we can build creative programs.

As I said, seven people, um, seven people who are doing remarkable work in support of small businesses.

Um just a remarkable team of people who we're really proud of because they are an example to the state of Ohio and what can happen when we marry regional focus with a urban growth focus.

So SBDC program, love for you to visit us and meet Kim and her team, just remarkable, people deeply committed to uh deeply committed to the community, so much so that we have a full-time person who focuses purely on immigrants, the city of new citizens.

Our ESP program, our ESP program by volume, is the largest program.

And I told you public transparency, I'm gonna show you my budget in a few moments and see how much that really reflects.

Uh, this is, and this is not a great thing, transparently.

This is about 75%, maybe 80% of our revenue.

Um, so it is a very significant program.

It is a program that is unique to the state of Ohio.

Other states don't run programs like this.

We're very proud of this.

Certainly, we are concerned about our reliance on this program.

So we're working today and every day to bring other resources to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

So that should this program end or be interrupted, we can continue what we do.

Um, but having said that, very proud of our ability to win this program.

This is a competitive program.

We were able to bring back to the Dayton region.

The Dayton region lost this program in 2015.

Another organization ran it, not the entrepreneur center.

We're able to win this program back in 2017, and we're not a second largest in the state, second only to Cleveland.

Back Cleveland region is half the population of the state of Ohio.

Um, and we are the second largest to it.

So very, very proud.

And again, for the record, City of Dayton is a huge part of this.

That funding you provide us allows us to pull money back into the community.

So that's a 30 million dollar program, 29.8 million dollar program to 2023 to 2025.

It's exactly the same size, 25 to 27.

So significant resource being brought into the community.

That's let that lets us drive in.

And this gives you a quick sense of impact.

This is July 2017 to 2024.

The impact we've had.

So we've taken 27.2 million dollars from the state of Ohio.

We have zero pre seat funding.

So I've told you we don't have a local farm.

We generated 30 million dollars of community match.

The city of Dayton is a part of that community match.

274,410 client service hours as of end of 2024, 1.07 billion dollars.

That's investment in our company.

That's revenue from those companies, those are non-diluting grants to those companies.

I can't speak to the what it did to the tax base, but I can tell you that if they're generating revenue and they're creating jobs, they're probably paying taxes.

Uh, and so one point set 1.07 billion dollars.

We're getting ready to tell our board in September that we're at about 1.25 billion in the 2025.

So the wheel is turning uh and the white wheel is speeding up.

When I say ROI, what I mean to say is for every dollar we got from the state, we've driven 39 of it.

And just in 2023 to 2024, that's 48 to one.

You're gonna see higher numbers in 2025.

Why is that important?

Because we're leveraging the money that we have, and we're increasing the pace of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

244 clients we served, 1100 new jobs, and that's net new jobs.

We don't want a job that happens to go away, and we leave it in our total.

We only count net new jobs.

So have we created more jobs than 1166?

Yes, to the extent that those jobs went away, or a company downsized or company had a change in plan, we subtract those jobs.

So those are 1,100 jobs that didn't exist and exist today.

The average salary, 83,000.

These are good paying jobs, entrepreneurial jobs in our small businesses are well paying jobs.

30% of those clients won another state award.

I won't go into much detail on it, other than to say it allows us to transition technology from a research institute, say 200,000 into a company that wants to transition a technology out of the Air Force Research Laboratory, for example, and fully 39% of our clients are engaged in some way with the department of development.

Again, simple math of that 1.1.07 billion dollars, about 65% of that came into the city 2017 to 2020.

Questions at all.

Yes, I think the issue um again.

I like almost having repeat everything you see relative to the net job increase.

And also in terms of our neighborhood, because those individuals are working and living uh throughout parts of the city.

And the aspect of how that contributes to the region, and how the region is stronger.

And then they see favorable results from their investments, and then they need to look for other ways of that.

I mean, I just thought the paraphrase that, but I think that's the point that you're trying to make.

That's the point that we really appreciate.

That's exactly right.

Well said, well, exactly right.

Uh, we're seeing the regional communities look to the urban culture.

So it is careful.

We're seeing regional communities look to the urban core of the city for companies that they want to move to the region.

Right.

Now we're really getting on the borders and saying, okay.

Matters a great deal to us, the nine or whoever you want to call the arcade district matter great deal to us.

We're trying to create an environment where you know where you're going, you know where you're parking.

So you may change your job, you want to change your parking spot.

So you know, focus on creating that density of opportunity in the urban core.

But you know, it's not the worst thing in the world for people to come downtown and look to try to bring companies into the region that is a lot of good things about the city.

Exactly.

Other questions.

All right.

Uh TDS, I'm going to talk about very, very briefly.

I touched on it.

TBSF matters to you if you want to transition technology from a research institute.

Why is it important to us as a community?

Because we have members of data research institute, the largest materials research institute in the country.

We have an Air Force Research Laboratory.

The jewel of the Air Force, and frankly, I would argue the jewel of all national research laboratories.

We have Parallax Research Institute.

We have research institutes that are generating technologies, generating opportunity.

But if it's just going to sit on the shelf after research, it doesn't do anything.

You're creating the economic values.

So TDS have a lot of us to create that economic vibrancy.

So in our portfolio, 48% of our portfolio have secured 63 million dollars in follow-on investment from federal sources.

That's the small business innovative research dollars.

So they've gotten shared wallet from the federal government, federal governments continue to support what they do as they spin that technology out.

But what's more impressive is 35% of the TPSF portfolio and sorry, 60 companies, 35% of the portfolio have generated $635 million in equity investments.

That's other people's money.

That's the investors, the investor class.

That's the angel network, that's the venture capital networks.

That's powerful.

When you say you're going to take a technology out of a research laboratory and you're going to attract other people's money, private capital, that's remarkable.

So TDSF helps us do that.

And finally, I would touch very briefly on our support for World Right.

We are the accelerator for the US Air Force Research Laboratory.

We do that for Cybertown.

Small business innovative research technology acceleration project.

When you win a research contract with the Air Force Feature Laboratory, you are connected to us, and out of space in the arcade, we are focusing on helping you commercialize your technology.

We put 320 companies through that program since its inception about seven years ago.

And those companies have gone on to generate three billion dollars in following.

About a billion and a half dollars of that comes from another federal source, follow-on investment, a different lab, an acquisition contract with the military.

This comes from private capital.

So nice mix of private and club capital.

So very proud of the fact that the entrepreneur center, a little nonprofit in Dayton, Ohio, is the excelerator for the US Air Force.

Pretty exciting and run out of the arcade.

Questions at all.

All right.

So 2019, our revenue is $4 million.

We'll finish 2025 at $9 million.

2026, our operating plan in 2026 is a touch 10 million.

So the growth in the program has been built around what we established, strategy we established in partnership with the city 10 years ago, and then executing against, and it's allowing us to grow our program.

We are in nonprofit.

We plow our money back into our organization.

One thing we've really been trying to do is we're trying to put money in the bank so that we can number one weather any changes we might see at the state or the federal level.

Number two, invest in our programs, invest in our people.

So when we carry a cash balance, please understand we're not distributing it.

It's not going to me or any of my team.

It is there for entrepreneurs.

We're growing our programs, but we happen to believe that as a good steward of your money, a good steward of state money, the very best thing that we can do is as we are able to put money in the bank so we can sustain our operations, so we can contribute to other programs, we can add value to other programs.

IBROC, good example of that.

As you saw when you approved Ibrock, leading entrepreneurs are contributing 155,000, I think, over the course of three years to IBROC from our funds, funds that we were able to provide because we focus on being a mean organization, but an organization that tries to protect our longevity.

Questions on that trajectory at all?

All right, here's our budget.

Excuse me, let me go back.

Just on IBROC.

Yeah.

I know we uh approved it uh a couple years ago and talked about that about some of the benefits of that whole process.

Yeah, so I think uh great question, Mayor.

I think if you think about the the principle of iBrock, the the animating force that was behind IBROC from the very beginning.

It started with city staff.

The animating principle there was that Dayton is actually blessed with a lot of organizations that help entrepreneurs.

It's not a question of a not enough resource, it's a question of connecting that resource, right?

And so the animating force for IBROC was really how do you connect organizations that are very relevant, we're completely how do you make sure that as I work with the chamber, the chamber will then community.

And support them as a principal library.

So IROC, I think to the citizens of Dayton, reflect what will feel like a higher level of service, a higher level of delivery, a higher delivery service, more integrated level of service, and then man one is painful for an entrepreneur is come to the city of Dayton, you do a search for support because you're an entrepreneur, you get on your favorite search engine, and you say entrepreneur support data, and you see this list of what information, and you start calling them.

You call the entrepreneur center, and we say absolutely we'd love to help you.

But you know who you ought to meet?

You ought to meet Belinda, and we send you to Balinda.

It's easy about Blender.

Oh, you know who you ought to meet?

You ought to meet so and so.

And the entrepreneur goes, plays ring around the rosy.

Everybody's saying they will help you, and they do, but they get tired.

And so one of the principal features of Ibroq is that ends that you can touch any organization.

That organization is aware of the organizations that you touched, aware of what each organization said to you, and we can act as if we were working in concert with one another.

So we're doing that from infrastructure perspective, literally a database, and we're gonna be able to see what the city said, what chamber said, what the entrepreneur center said, and so the entrepreneur is an entrepreneur.

Just like our homeless policy solutions solution, that's really funny.

One entry.

And that's deceptively difficult.

Now, my SBDC by federal law can't share information.

An SPDC client, confidentiality is paramount.

Well, how do you work around that?

Well, they entered the entrepreneur center.

If they get referred to the SBDC and they become an SPDC client, SBDC can take it.

But when they come into the entrepreneur center, we know who you are, we can connect you to ACROF.

We come to MRAC, DMBack services, connect to that.

And so that digital connection, I think is really important.

And then the wisdom and the vision of the city, the city staff, is you connect and then you divide leader.

And that's what I brought really.

I'm sorry, just as planned.

Just as planned.

Everything goes slower, Mayor, than what you want it to, um, but just as planned.

We have some exciting announcements coming up, which I'll share in a little bit.

Yes, just as planned.

So as an organization, again, I told you total transparency.

This is what we do with our money, this is where we get our money.

Um, our staff, as I said, we're in a year about 27 people.

Um, we tried to always put a little bit of money in the bank.

We think that's the right thing to do as good stewards of your money, uh, state money, the federal money.

We want to be able to sustain what we do.

Questions on our budget and all.

Okay.

Um, this is where we are right now.

I only pointed out to say when the city of Dayton provides money to a subcontractor or vendor, we need to know how we treat other vendors and how we treat small businesses in the city.

So we pay kind of leverage your money well, and we try always to focus on sustainability and delivery of value to our so we can bring it with that.

Any questions about our operations?

Any questions about anybody comment button about where we okay?

Let me talk about IBROC.

Mayor, thank you for the uh the introduction of IBRA.

That can be in the mail, I suppose, right?

Um very from a commerce perspective.

From an administrative and contractual perspective, let me just say the city has been tremendous to work with, as always.

Uh, city staff has been a wonderful work with.

And when I say remarkable work with what I really mean is they were a partner and we want to wait to build a contract that allows us to do any work we need in partnership with the urban league.

It was important to us, it was important to this commission that the urban league be central to and directly connected to the entrepreneur center.

And that is true.

That adds complexity in the contracting.

And so the city has been just and our team have been tremendous.

Um, you did allow for a small advance so that we could sort of get ahead of the work we're doing.

That advance has been paid.

So thank you for that.

That's allowing to really amplify what we're doing.

And we've created this digital connection between our two organizations so you can feel confident that when the entrepreneur center and the urban league work in concert together, we really are.

We really think we're an operational perspective, we've established that connective tissue, that digital connective tissue, so that we can begin to share contracts and continu and share engagements.

Our marketing and branding is being finalized right now.

We looked at some uh final marketing yesterday.

Our public launch is going to be the 25th of September.

Uh so please mark that down.

I know um we will be receiving the pin with a formal invite today, later this afternoon.

Um 25 September is really when we say this is IBROC fully engaged, fully ready for a client, fully ready for engagement with the community.

We've been engaging with just a bit of a coming up.

25 September.

As I said, we have been working with the community.

We've been facilitating meetings with what we call business support organizations.

That's that collection of people who are actually touching those entrepreneurs.

We've been meeting regularly.

The urbanly is leading this work very, very well.

We're working with some specific pilot clients to demonstrate that in this planning and launch period, we're not just sitting on our hands, we're actively engaging with clients.

Again, this was the wisdom and the vision of the city leadership, city manager and and and staff.

We wanted to be able to say we're working while we're building the airplane.

And so we are supporting specific clients.

We had 53 candidates for the executive director.

I am confident that Nicole Miller and I will not make a more important decision, and our advisory board won't make a more important decision than the executive director.

53 applicants for that executive director position.

33 per 33 of those candidates, 60 percent had diverse background.

26 percent or 26 of those were female candidates, 27 male candidates.

We've conducted five formal interviews.

We and our advisory board have narrowed that down to two candidates.

Our final interview is Friday, and that is our final interview with the advisory board.

Nicole and I have completed our work.

We've recommended two candidates to the advisory board.

That's an advisory board that was established by city staff.

That advisory board will tell us who they think the appropriate is, and we will extend an offer.

I hope that that offer will be extended early next week.

We're close.

We're close.

Or I'm gonna have to go to the same better than this lift to clean because I do not want to have that meeting.

I I can't stand in front of the community and say anything about being an executive director.

So we want to make sure that we're close, we're so close.

Here's our plan and our timeline.

Um, it is everything I just told you.

Um, there is another role, a capacity building role that we will begin to interview for.

We wanted the executive director to be in place because that's really building his or her own staff.

Um, so capacity building manager, we've got good recruits for that.

We've got good candidates for that.

We're gonna let the executive director get his earth feed on the ground, make sure that they're comfortable at our own vision and build their own staff.

So that capacity building recruiting will start in mid-September.

We'll move quickly.

But again, our public launch 25 September.

Oops, I remember sorry.

Is that we are going to full fundraising strategy by November of 2026?

Leche was very direct in talking to us.

Really?

I could use other words.

Very direct.

And in pressing on us the importance that if we were to win the IBROC contract, that fundraising had to begin to English.

And our gentle, very gentle pushback was yes, but fundraising on a vision is hard.

Fundraising with metrics and impact is not.

And so the Shay kind enough in her very direct way to say, all right, I'll give you a year, get your feet on the ground, get the executive director in place, show your impact to the community, then you better bust your rear end.

I will be polite in the rear end.

And so I will tell you the very first one.

She did not use those goal.

I I confess that when she said it to me, I probably blushed.

So I don't believe that either.

That's true.

That's not true.

She's been wonderful.

Um, the very first principle, the very first goal, the very first objective for our executive director during our interview was can you raise money?

Can you raise money?

Uh, this cannot be a long cyclittle city.

Uh we're just all familiar with organizations that got funding from the parent organizations, fled the nest, and then struggle.

We can't have that.

Um, so fundraising will be our primary focus.

Up rated the bed in the street in first, and I'm confident that we already are in about the exciting time.

And again, thank you, staff, city manager, and and commission for the vision.

The end of these name and uh talking to us about our peers.

All right, I'll stop there.

I am happy to go into our capital access strategy.

It's a little dense, candidly.

I wanted you to see it transparent.

Um, but it is a little bit more forward-looking that maybe the commission may want.

Again, I'm happy to go into it.

I want to be respectful of your time.

Any questions on anything I've set up to this point?

Okay, I have to run.

Okay, I do have some questions for you, and I'll just reach out to you.

I'm trying to get over to start up week.

Okay.

Also, so we'll talk about it.

Hey, Commissioner, thank you.

Appreciate you.

Come here.

Thank you.

I appreciate your presentation, your detailed presentation.

I don't have any questions right now.

I'll review um currently if I do have any other questions back to Susan Mr.

But thank you.

I appreciate all of the detailed information.

That's me.

Yeah, two questions.

Um how does the entrepreneur center um with our economic development, broader economic um development strategy for the city?

And who's our point person that works with you on that work?

Yep.

Um, so I'll answer the second first.

Okay.

Our point person is Veronica.

We meet with Veronica monthly.

Um, the monthly meetings consist of a review of our statement work, um, which is formulaic.

We've been in partnership with you for for years, but it is meaningful in the sense that we're checking the boxes, we're saying what are we, the entrepreneur center, doing in line with the vision of and the the direction of the commission.

Um, we are also using those opportunity, those meetings to look forward.

What should we be doing in the city?

So, for example, we haven't announced it yet, we're planning it with the city now.

Uh, but we feel like as a community and as a community of entrepreneurs in the city, the entrepreneurs don't really understand the city and don't understand the importance of the vision and the strategies that the city.

And so you hear a lot of people complaining.

Actually, you hear none of them.

I don't understand what the city's doing for small business.

Why isn't this happening?

Why isn't there a fund for this?

Why isn't there a better way to get here?

Why isn't there a lots of people complaining?

Polite word, but they don't understand the totality of what the city is doing.

I'm not a commercial for the city.

I don't exist to be a commercial for the city, but if our residents and our entrepreneurs understood the value of those relationships and how to work with the city, city staff, city departments, everybody would be better off.

And so uh two months ago in our regular meeting, Veronica and I were thinking about it.

We were brainstorming a little bit, and we said, you know what we've got to do, we've got to try to change that.

And so we're going to do some city focused entrepreneurial forums.

Uh and again, we we Veronica's vision was that the commission and city manager staff be part of that.

You got to demystify some of the processes, you got to demystify when I go and get a permit and how zoning works and all that kind of stuff.

We can do that.

We can do that in partnership with the administration or the agency.

Um, so it's that kind of work that we do on a regular basis with Veronica primarily.

Um, I've been blessed to meet with Lachea, uh, I don't know, probably more times than she cares to admit because she's always telling us what to do.

Um meeting with the Shea regularly, and then I'm blessed to get a chance to spend some time with Shelley on larger kind of strategic initiatives.

So connection with city and staff, very deep, very uh very enduring.

How we connect to the larger economic development ecosystem.

I think it I would simply say, Commissioner Fearchild, almost repeat what I said about outreach to the community.

We do exist to demystify some processes.

We do exist to translate business speak for city staff, and city staff speak to small businesses.

Um, so we understand the the city's larger vision for urban development for part of it, we contribute to it.

We understand and contribute to the city's larger staff for I'm not sure what we're calling the revenue.

How do you generate revenue for projects under Shelley's leadership, Commissioner Shaw's leadership?

So we're participating in that.

I would simply say that it's been a real pleasure and an honor to be a part of those conversations.

There's a voice for small business, whether it's I or other staff members, there's a voice for small business, I think, and most of the planning that's going on at the city, or at least the discussions that are going on in the city, which is unique to the city thing, and a lot of teams are very envious of the way we have the city.

Hearing you say that, I was curious.

Do we have well first?

Is there someone in all the people who provide services to the entrepreneurs?

Is there anyone who's particularly under myone who's particularly well versed in all the pro, I guess there's the previous question.

How much interactions do these entrepreneurs have with the city in terms of zoning permits or uming opportunities, those kind of things?

So what's kind of the scale of that?

Is there someone on your side who's well versed in that who can give guidance, kind of shepherd them through navigate them?

Or is there someone on the city side who can be a navigator through all those things and not you know an entrepreneur has one point person in those questions?

Yeah, absolutely.

Commissioner Fairchild, I can get you specific numbers, I don't have them in front of me in terms of volume.

I think it's a fair question.

What volume, what number or small businesses are engaging with the city?

I can tell you by volume, meaning literal volume.

I hear about it a lot.

Okay, right.

So I trust that that number is pretty significant.

I would say that, and I and I consider this a complete strength of the relationship between the entrepreneur center and the city.

A lot of those are going through Veronica.

And Veronica is getting my entrepreneurs, our entrepreneurs in touch with the appropriate people, creating frictionless pathways to resolve issues.

Um, best example I can give you, a real-time example I can give you is as you've all seen in the news, the uh the uh Mont Baller Montessori took residence in the entrepreneur center at the hub, I should say.

They took one more conference room to turn it into a high school effectively, Montessoria Montessori High School.

Turns out that they had to have a particular permit for that.

They thought it was a zoning permit.

It turns out it's just an occupancy permit, but they didn't know that.

They didn't have a clue who to talk to.

Veronica helped me navigate the system, get to the zoning team.

Zoning team said, no, no, no, zoning is fine, it's zoned appropriately, it's ability permit.

Get your architect involved, get city permitting involved, and in three days he had that resolved.

They thought they were gonna have to delay opening and we resolved it.

So the relationships between the city and the entrepreneur center and the entrepreneurs are fairly high level.

It's going through Veronica, myself, some of my staff.

But in truth, I think that means that pace of resolution is pretty significant.

And we're able to turn questions around very quickly for entrepreneurs.

The city exhibits its responsiveness.

I think in a really important way.

That's great.

Yeah.

Um, and then the last was around kind of capital access, and I just kind of skimmed through the presentation points.

I was curious what role does HRC play, particularly thinking through you know NCRC has some national strategies on getting access to capital for small business and um particularly minority owned businesses.

Goes right back.

Great question, Commissioner Fairchild.

It goes right back to the question Mayor asked kind of what is the vision of IBROC and how does Ibro really enable connection.

One of the parts of Ibroc that I think is so smart, and it's been visioned by city staff was that there's a specific role to bring all of these business service organizations together, and when one of them has a novel idea, a different approach, something that's going to be working in the other places, and they want to test and model.

Facilitates that across the multitude of organizations.

So my direct answer to your question is as we think about capital access strategies.

Some of those approaches, and HRC is at that table, bringing those ideas, those concepts forward.

IBROC as a construct allows us to bring those to the community, and IBROC allows us to potentially fund some of those things.

So it is that sort of connective tissue that amplifies everybody's voice.

So your question about capital access, HRC has an idea on or concept for capital access.

That we use to surface that idea.

Is the vehicle that we use to uh promote the idea, connect the idea to our regional BSOs, and their vision become thank you.

Nope, nothing new.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Good.

Thank you.

Okay.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

I appreciate you all so much.

Thank you for the back to please your staff and tell them thank you also for most of our not only the effort that you make over the region, but specifically bringing out the tooth for the city's primary.

I know that that's probably because your influence, but uh, we we do appreciate that.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Okay, all right.

Thank you so much.