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Bounce looks to help with high-tech manufacturing in joint venture
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: October 18, 2018
Akron’s Bounce Innovation Hub and Cleveland’s Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) are creating a joint venture intended to help manufacturing start-ups in the area with all the large and little things that they need, said Bounce CEO Douglas Weintraub. The new venture will be called the “Iterator.”
Weintraub said that the purpose of the Iterator will be to serve high tech manufacturing start-ups with services that include everything from building prototypes to business expertise. MAGNET has the physical resources and expertise to help area businesses who need that kind of help, and Bounce has the physical facilities and business experts.
Weintraub said that his background is as an entrepreneur in software.
“I started a few companies, and I have invested in a few,” he said.
And while there are a few companies in the Bounce facility that can be called light manufacturers, most of the space is dedicated to software and other high-tech businesses outside of full-scale product manufacturing.
Brandon Cornuke, vice president of startup services for MAGNET, said that the purpose of the program is primarily to get inventors “out of the basement” and into making their products. He also said that the program is open to small manufacturers who need to expand their facilities.
MAGNET has been operating for over 30 years, providing manufacturers with help with engineering, strategic growth and marketing expertise. Cornuke said that the Iterator project will provide high-tech manufacturing start-ups with help with organizational team resources, intellectual property advice, operational help, prototyping, and anything else a company might need to get off the ground or expand.
What MAGNET brings to the table folds in perfectly with what Bounce brings, said Weintraub, noting that Bounce provides both business expertise and a large amount of floor space.
“Space is a part of manufacturing, and Bounce is a great space,” said Cornuke. “It is hard to find appropriate space for physical production machines. You need certain floors, ceilings, freight elevators and docks, and this place possesses all of those.”
The nine-story (plus basement) Bounce facility on South Main Street is 300,000 square feet, said Weintraub.
Each floor is about 30,000 square feet. It is currently filled to about 65 percent capacity, leaving it with “as much physical space as we need” for the Iterator.
“We are an old manufacturing facility, so the physical space is already in place,” he said.
Bounce also already possesses a number of machines that can help in prototyping, including 3D printers, welders, embroiderers, heat printers, CNC machines and more, said Weintraub.
“And MAGNET has tons of equipment in Cleveland that we will have access to,” he added.
Bounce is creating its first floor as a community space, which includes a maker space for the Iterator project and others. The space will include everything from a café and meeting rooms to gaming space for the University of Akron e-sports team. The $3.2 million project is just underway. “The first floor will provide a space for people to meet and talk,” and you never know what can come out of that, said Weintraub.
The Iterator is the second joint project that Bounce has formed in the last few months, and is similar to the one recently formed with BioEnterprise in biotechnology, said Weintraub. In both cases, Bounce reached out to organizations that would help expand its ability to serve local small start-ups.
All of these efforts make Akron a better place to live, said Weintraub. “We want to attract and keep millennials and young people, and we can do that by giving them something to do downtown.” Those efforts include both creating places to work and play, he said, pointing out the city’s efforts to revitalize downtown with breweries, restaurants, and more.
And Cornuke is right there with Weintraub. “We are really pleased to help create a project that will be more than a sum of its parts,” he said. “It is just good for the community.”
The Iterator is just getting off the ground, but all of the participants have very high hopes for the project. The two organizations are currently looking for a person to run this project who will have an office in the Akron facility.
The Bounce website is https://bouncehub.org. MAGNET is at https://www.manufacturingsuccess.org