Northern Kentucky entrepreneur Rebecca Southern credits Main Street Ventures with helping grow her nutritious baked goods business, The Body Bakery & Company.
Southern said she routinely utilized Main Street Ventures for help with business questions.
“Anytime I’ve ever had questions about marketing or legal help, they always have an avenue to send us to or someone to contact to get help,” she told LINK nky.
Main Street Ventures, an entrepreneurial support nonprofit that provides capital and coaching to entrepreneurs in the Greater Cincinnati area, celebrated its 25th anniversary on Wednesday afternoon at the Woodward Theatre in Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood.
The anniversary reception was followed by the Main Street Ventures Activator Showcase, featuring 17 entrepreneurs who received funding and support from the organization to start and grow their businesses. Southern was one of the featured entrepreneurs at the showcase.
“They’ve really helped us increase our business,” Southern said.
Executive Director Sean Parker touted the organization’s impact on the Greater Cincinnati area’s business community, citing the number of companies the organization has funded.
“Since 2018, we’ve poured a little over $4 million into the Greater Cincinnati community across 170 companies,” Parker said.
These 170 companies collectively generated over $34 million in revenue, created over 760 regional jobs and raised over $23 million in additional capital, according to a Main Street Ventures press release.
Main Street Ventures was launched in 1999 as a community hub for technology companies on Main Street in Over-The-Rhine. Since then, Main Street Ventures raised over $35 million in capital and created over $200 million in exit value for community startups, according the release.
When creating the organization, Main Street Ventures board member and founder George Molinsky said he wanted to create a space fostering collaboration between the region’s entrepreneurs.
“We created a space where people could more intentionally come together and just help each other,” Molinksy said. “That’s really how it started. The collective impact of that… resonates and continues on today.”
Over the years, Main Street Ventures has increasingly gotten involved in the Northern Kentucky entrepreneurial ecosystem. Dave Knox, executive director of Blue North, Northern Kentucky’s primary entrepreneurial resource and advocacy organization, also sits on the board of Main Street Ventures.
In January 2023, Blue North unveiled the NKY Entrepreneurship Fund, which prioritizes and supports Northern Kentucky-based entrepreneurs and organizations, including startups, support organizations, educational vehicles and accelerators.
Main Street Ventures was the first entrepreneurial support organization to partner with Blue North to launch an initiative under the NKY Entrepreneurship Fund. As part of the initiative, the NKY Entrepreneur Fund provides half the total funding awarded by Main Street Ventures to Northern Kentucky-based companies.
Looking ahead, Parker pledged that Main Street Ventures will continue supporting the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem of Greater Cincinnati.
“As we think about what the next chapter is, it’s really thinking about how do we ensure that these companies are on a path to scale and to grow,” Parker said. “We shouldn’t just be happy that they’re surviving. We want them to be thriving.”
