#112: Daniel Isenberg & Dan Hampu (Burton D. Morgan Foundation & Scalerator NEO)

Lay of The Land's conversation today is with Dan Hampu and Daniel Isenberg about their collective work at the Burton D Morgan Foundation and Scalerator NEO — covering why it’s important to focus on companies at scale relative to startups when thinking about the overall prosperity of an entrepreneurial ecosystem, the state and trajectory of Northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the challenges that scaling companies experience, and how the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and Scalerator NEO can help.

Dan Hampu joined The Burton D. Morgan Foundation in 2022 as the President and CEO — Previously, he served in a number of roles within the entrepreneurial landscape through Northeast Ohio. Most recently he served as the Executive Director of the Northeast Ohio Student Venture Fund, as a Venture Partner with Interstate Fusion Ventures, and as the Chief Operating Officer and board member of the Akron-based software startup company, Fontus Blue.

Joining Dan, Daniel Isenberg has been an entrepreneur, teacher of entrepreneurship, and venture capitalist in Israel who has made investments in many dozens of startups across the world — he was a professor at Harvard Business School for 11 years where he pioneered education in international entrepreneurship, and since 2010 has been teaching at Columbia Business School through all of which, he has written over 35 articles on entrepreneurship and authored his book Worthless Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value where he’s been featured on Harvard Business Review, the Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg, Wallstreet Journal, Financial Times and many others. Outside of the academic world, he’s put it all into practice through Scalerator NEO, which we’ll spend our time on today, in addition to Scale Up Milwaukee, Scale Up Rio, Scale Up Atlantic Canada, Scale Up Trinidad and Tobago, all of which he has founded.

Tying these two organizations together, Scalerator NEO is made possible by the support of the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, whose mission is to foster free enterprise through grantmaking, ecosystem building, and knowledge sharing and whose efforts are built around fostering youth, collegiate and adult entrepreneurship in our region. Scalerator NEO is a program is for scaling companies in Northeast Ohio with annual revenues in the range of $3M to $15M with the potential for further growth — Companies from all sectors partake in a six-month, seven-workshop curriculum to help founders and owners realize that growth — for example, the first Scaleraor NEO cohort collectively experienced a growth in earnings of 40% over the year.

In our conversation today, we cover why it’s important to focus on companies at scale relative to startups when thinking about the overall prosperity of a entrepreneurial ecosystem, we talk about the state and trajectory of Northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and we explore what are the kinds of challenges that scaling companies experience and how the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and Scalerator NEO can help. Please enjoy my conversation with Dan Hampu and Daniel Isenberg.

Connect with Daniel Isenberg on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/disenberg/

Connect with Dan Hampu on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/danhampu/

Learn more about Scalerator NEO — https://www.scaleratorneo.org/

Learn more about The Burton D. Morgan Foundation — https://www.bdmorganfdn.org/

Follow Scalerator NEO on Twitter @ScaleratorNEO — https://twitter.com/ScaleratorNEO

Follow The Burton D. Morgan Foundation on Twitter @bdmorganfdn — https://twitter.com/bdmorganfdn

Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/

Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe

Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland

https://www.jeffreys.page/

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