Where the Olentangy and Scioto rivers come together lies the city of Columbus, Ohio, a bedrock town famously known as “Test City, USA,” boasting demographics that mirrored the country’s population, and the home of The Ohio State University. It is steadily becoming an emerging tech scene in the Midwest where startups are finding all the tools needed to develop burgeoning businesses.

Venture capitalists injected over $3 billion into the city over the past 20 years, particularly in healthcare and insurance startups, according to Crunchbase data. Investment into the city startups started picking up around 2017 and really peaked in 2021.

That’s when investment essentially doubled, going from $583 million in 2020 to just over $1 billion, with half of those dollars going into two companies: healthcare technology company Olive and autonomous robotics company Path Robotics. So far in 2022, $110 million has gone into Columbus startups.

Olive is now valued at over $4 billion and is among Columbus success stories like CoverMyMeds, a healthcare software company that was acquired by the McKesson Corp. in 2017 for $1.4 billion, which represents Central Ohio’s first $1 billion exit. Root Insurance, which raised over $800 million since 2015, went public in 2020. Other notable raises include Forge Biologics’ $120 million Series B round, which was thought to be Ohio’s largest Series B to date. Forge plans to add 200 new jobs by 2023.

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Columbus has also caught the eye of enterprises, including Facebook, Amazon and now Intel, which announced earlier this year that it will build two chip factories outside of the city that will provide 3,000 company jobs and many more thousands of indirect jobs. Meanwhile, therapeutics company Amgen announced last November that it is building a new biomanufacturing facility in New Albany, one of Columbus’ suburbs, providing 400 jobs for assembling and packaging medicines.

All of this activity, plus a low cost of living, availability of a young, skilled talent pool and public/private partnerships eager to support entrepreneurs, research and innovation, is why TechCrunch has chosen to spotlight Columbus’ growing startup scene with a special episode of TechCrunch Live.

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Startup Central

Nick Potts, co-founder and CEO of prescription startup GiftHealth, is a veteran of the Columbus startup scene, having joined CoverMyMeds when it was fewer than 50 employees. He went on to co-found medication delivery company ScriptDrop in 2016 and now GiftHealth in 2020.

Potts called the city “an absolute talent hotbed for healthtech” and one where “countless people in Columbus graciously give me their time to ask questions, learn from them and pitch ideas to them” throughout his startup journey.

“Columbus has smart, driven and experienced …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/01/columbus-ohio-is-quickly-becoming-the-midwests-tech-hub/