Cleveland Makes Inc. List of Top 50 Places to Start a Business, Citing Biomedical Innovations
Ranking predicts the “next great health innovation” will likely emerge from Cleveland
Cleveland made Inc.’s recent “50 Best Places in America for Starting a Business” list, with the magazine citing the city’s flourishing biomedical sector as a primary contributor to its entrepreneur-friendliness. The city ranked no. 48 on the magazine’s scale, which factored in rates of entrepreneurship, high-growth company density, early-stage funding deals and other metrics.
“After losing several Fortune 500 companies in the 2000s, this Rust Belt city is reinventing itself as an entrepreneurial haven, thanks to heavy bets from government and local philanthropists. Healthtech is central, as is the influence of Case Western Reserve University,” the magazine wrote, predicting that “the next great health innovation will most likely emerge” from Cleveland.
Inc. singled out BioEnterprise Entrepreneur-in-Residence Russ Donda as a key player in the region’s biomedical entrepreneurial ecosystem for his work in “helping founders assess the commercial feasibility of their technology.” The magazine also pointed to BioEnterprise portfolio company Cleveland HeartLab as a local biomedical success story, citing the company’s technology that identifies cardiovascular disease through biomarkers, as well as its 2017 acquisition by Quest Diagnostics.
In individual rankings by metric, Cleveland ranked no. 31 for high-growth company density, no. 31 for early-stage funding deals and no. 34 for wage growth.