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When Todd Mollenkopf founded his high-tech incubator in Columbus in 1999, public equities markets re riding high, venture capital investments were at record levels, and Central Ohio's business and government leaders were touting the city as an up-and-coming "tech town."
Nineteen months later, most of those dynamics have changed.
And though Mollenkopf's OnVentures still is here, it's found itself struggling amid forces both in and out of its control.
After personally investing nearly $6 million to establish OnVentures, a home for the youngest of high-tech companies, the incubator's general manager is running out of money.
With $150,000 of operating cash needed a month, millions needed to keep five of his incubator companies afloat and the likely departure of OnVenture's chief operating officer, Mollenkopf has arrived at a proverbial crossroads - he can't afford to keep the incubator running and he can't afford to shut it down.
"The only way I'm leaving Columbus is if you see me hitchhiking with my backpack out on Interstate 70," Mollenkopf says. "You put your equity into it, you build it, you give it your best shot and you don't give up until the very, very end - until you're the last person there and that's the dynamic I face today."
Betting on Columbus
From 1996 to 1999, the 30-year-old Mollenkopf was vice president of corporate development at Myriad Investment Holdings, a media and technology group in Johannesburg, South Africa. He got the money to form OnVentures by participating in Myriad's two public offerings in the 1990s. Myriad holds a 59 percent interest in the publicly traded MIH Ltd., a payTV services business.
Money in hand, Mollenkopf scoured the country, looking for a city filled with untapped business opportunities, a low cost of living and a talented labor pool. Columbus, he thought, was it.
"What attracted us, all of those attributes are still alive and well," Mollenkopf says, referring mostly to the intellectual capital generated by Battelle Memorial Institute and Ohio State University.
But beyond those aspects sits what Mollenkopf calls "a ruthless dynamic that ultimately will come up to bite...