CLEVELAND -- JumpStart Inc. and NorTech are gaining national attention for their success in helping small businesses get the advice, data or investment they need.
Beachwood's Embrace Pet Insurance has 22 workers, with one in New Jersey.
The firm sells health coverage insurance for pets. Laura Bennett started it after she graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Finance.
She claims only one percent of American pets are insured and that number is 30 percent in England.
JumpStart invested in the company to help it get started seven years ago. This year will be its first money-making year.
"We wouldn't exist without JumpStart," Bennett said.
The White House has taken note of JumpStart's success and is seeking to apply its model to national job creation efforts.
"The Economic Development Administration has asked JumpStart to look at other regions of the country and find out what their strengths are and help them promote entrepreneurs' ideas," said JumpStart's Relationship Officer Cathy Belk.
In Willoughby, InnoVentures is a young firm with a handful of workers that thinks it could be on the verge of helping add another dimension to Northeast Ohio's economy.
Under the auspices of NorTech, it's partnering with Painesville's city power system, Parma's Graftech, and Ashlawn Energy, a Virginia company expanding to Northeast Ohio.
It's working to build a massive energy storage system using Vanadium Redox flow battery technology.
It's a federal stimulus project. It could have implications for long-range storage of wind and solar power.
Several countries are in a race to perfect it.
Chief Technology Office Charles Tanzola says, "It's going to be thousands of jobs, thousands."
NorTech is using its cluster concept to fast-track the development.
NorTech President Rebecca Bagley said the idea, "is to develop the technology here, test it here, and have the jobs here.
More than 100 small business owners or executives will join the President and several cabinet members at Cleveland State University.
There will be group discussions of exports, clean energy, access to capital, entrepreneurship and work-force development.
Both Embrace Pet Insurance and InnoVentures say they would like to see pressure put on banks to loan to small businesses.
WKYC-TV