A new $250,000 microloan fund has been launched to help Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs in need of a small and quick cash infusion.The Appleseed Micro-Loan program is designed to provide loans of up to $35,000 to businesses with fewer than 50 employees and is being overseen by the Braintree Business Development Center in Mansfield, Ohio.“It’s just [...]

Plans for a new, small, state-backed investment fund that would’ve been operated by Cleveland-based venture development group JumpStart were shot down earlier this year by the state’s Third Frontier program.But JumpStart and the lead investor in the fund, which would be called Euclid Ventures, haven’t given up on the fund and are exploring options to [...]

Health IT firm CoverMyMeds has raised $1 million to continue developing its prior authorization technology.The fundraising has come over the course of about a year, with the largest investors being Cleveland venture development group JumpStart and Charles Hallberg, the founder of MemberHealth, a Solon, Ohio prescription drug coverage company that sold for $630 million in [...]

“This machine kills fascists!”That blaring howl, made by entrepreneur Marc Canter while brandishing a laptop high over his head, was certainly the highlight from a sheer entertainment standpoint of a public “community engagement meeting” held by Cleveland venture development group JumpStart. (At the end of the meeting, Canter was escorted out by security after a [...]

Just a few weeks after it enjoyed hearty praise from President Obama, Cleveland economic development group JumpStart has been on the receiving end of some harsh criticism from three local entrepreneurs.

The well-documented phenomenon of fake Twitter accounts have been used to skewer the rich and famous from politics to business to sports to Hollywood. But you know the fake Twitter trend has jumped the shark when it’s happening to little-known business incubators and largely under-the-radar seed investment funds. In recent weeks, two such Northeast Ohio groups have received the fake Twitter treatment.

SironRX hopes to raise $2.5 million, which it would use to fund a Phase 2 clinical trial of its wound-healing technology.

Investing in health is one of the reasons some are predicting the Midwest will be one of 2011′s hottest growth markets for venture capital investing. Through the first three quarters of 2010, the amount of venture money invested in Midwestern startups grew 45 percent to $818 million, according to the National Venture Capital Association. That’s a higher amount than Midwestern venture investment in the full year of recession-plagued 2009.

Twin Cities entrepreneurs may soon have a new — or at least improved — resource for mentoring and seed funding, thanks to a federal grant to Cleveland economic development group JumpStart.

With publicly revealed investments of $250,000 from a Cleveland economic development group and $400,000 from an Illinois angel group, rudimentary mathematics tell us heart monitoring startup Endotronix Inc. has raised at least $650,000. But the company’s latest funding round went above that amount, only Endotronix isn’t saying by how much.