Bill Baumel
Founder of the Ohio Innovation Fund (OIF) Bill Baumel has spent more than 20 years investing in Silicon Valley. His investment areas include SaaS, big data, cybersecurity, and MedTech, and his past investments have resulted in five IPOs and 15 major acquisitions by Dell, SAP, Medtronic, Intuit, Stryker, and others.
In an exclusive interview with Startup City, Bill Baumel shares his insights about Ohio Innovation Fund's ongoing trends and challenges in the industry.
Could you brief me about the journey you have had and the current roles and responsibilities in the organization that you are working for?
I started in the Private Markets Group of Brinson Partners, went on to invest in Silicon Valley for 20 years, and started Ohio Innovation Fund in 2016. Over the last six years, we have invested in about 20 companies both in tech and med tech – 7 of which have grown from seven-figure to nine/ten-figures in value – and we have had three successful exits. One of those exits is the merger of Stiriling Ultracold into Biolife Solutions, a public company trading under the ticker symbol BLFS. Stirling provides cold chain (safe storage of lab samples) and other types of services in biopharma and cell and gene therapy areas, as well as driving the cold chain for the distribution of COVID vaccine, having partnerships with Pfizer Moderna, UPS and Walgreens – as well as with UNICEF for distribution of the Covid vaccines in Africa and Latin America. In addition, HR -tech company Able was acquired by Bullhorn and Connexus, a supply chain management software company dedicated to creating diverse supply chains, was acquired by Coupa.
How has the Startup City evolved over the years?
It used to be that four or five start-ups tried to tackle any given problem/opportunity, with one of those becoming the leader with a great outcome, and another couple doing ok with nice returns via merger/acquisition, and a couple just didn’t cut it. Now, the number of companies trying to solve any problem in diverse ways has simply grown exponentially. The amount of funding that goes into these companies is astronomical – many companies today need to be unicorns (worth $1 billion) just to give VC’s back 2 or 3X on their investment. So really being relevant, unique, impactful and able to return 10X on invested capital needs to be a clear focus in today’s crowded and super-funded startup world.
What are some of the challenges or pain points that you see in the startup industry today and how effectively do you solve those problems?
Building an appealing brand that engages people to attract talent has been a challenge. There are lots of startups competing in the pool for great entrepreneurial talent. You must provide an innovative, collaborative, fast-paced, high-impact culture and environment to attract and retain the best of the best. There’s also hybrid workforces – where It is important to align all company employees while they work partially in the office and partially from anywhere. Therefore, establishing a sense of teamwork, embedding a culture, and collaborating are crucial. By combining online collaboration and in-person interactions, colleagues feel a part of the team, which is important because otherwise, people feel left out and isolated. As a result, managing a hybrid team emerged as one of the biggest challenges in COVID.
"Make sure you do an honest assessment of yourself, build a great team that complements you, and get out there to the market and learn/iterate"
Likewise, to get noticed by customers you must have a clear, simple, concise, impactful statement of what you do and why they should care – particularly in areas such as data science or cyber security where there are tons of companies all using similar buzz words and trying to get a slice of those huge markets.
According to you what are some of the technological trends that are witnessed in the startup industry today?
There are various opportunities out there in data science. People are therefore trying to capture, process, and gain insights from data to make better decisions. One of our companies, Immuta, is involved in data governance, privacy, and security, as well as ensuring unbiased data analysis by AI saving from false conclusions. There has been a great deal of growth in the field of big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, as well as cyber security. The cyber security world is filled with opportunities, as smart people are industrious in their attempt to get corporate information and profit from it.
Over the next few years, there will be a lot of innovative in BioPharm and cell and gene therapy solutions – personalized medicine.
In your opinion, what are the best business practices to follow to stay ahead of the competition?
One of the best practices would be proactively gathering market feedback, being open to it, and iterating based on that data quickly and meaningfully. Have a mindset where you want to hear why others like competitors, where they think they are better than you, and then create a plan to leapfrog competitors via new product iniatives/developments and better messaging of what you have and why you are better, faster and/or cheaper. .
What would be your piece of advice to the future generation from the startup industry today?
Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, as well as what your role in the company will be in the future which will help you hire people. Make sure you do a good assessment of yourself, build a great team, and then get out there to the market. Be open to feedback from the market and approach the task as a data science project, where you gather information from the market, and then iterate, take the information, and sort out what information is relevant to match the market pain point. Regardless of differences in pain points, once a product gets traction in a certain market, there is a segment ready for expansion. As you scale your business, you begin to see rapid growth when your product and message are on the right spot and your target markets are on the right spot. If you see that traction, you start thinking about how you can scale the company by hiring people who have experience and can take the company to the next level – the person who can make some initial sales is usually different than the person who can scale a sales organization to $10 or $20 million in ARR is usually different than the person who can scale a sales organization to $100 million plus in ARR, and so on across the board in all functions/areas.
