2019 Startup Spotlight | Columbus
VENTURE CAPITAL RAISED TO DATE
$ 35M
TOTAL EMPLOYEES TO DATE
74
RECENT SERIES SERIES C LED BY KLEINER PERKINS
EMPLOYEE GROWTH FORECAST - 2019
150+
It would appear that there is more buzz surrounding the Columbus entrepreneurial and startup community than ever before. What key factors are driving this growth? What’s missing?
Fro: The growth is being driven by more capital being invested in Columbus, and a leveraging of the talent pool to not only retain more top talent, but attract it to top performing companies in the area. There probably just needs to be a bit more robust early stage/angel funding market to give founders more options, and then Columbus is off to the races!
Q
Who is one entrepreneur (or person) you’d love to have coffee with?
Fro: I really admire the culture of customer orientation and experimentation that Amazon deploys today, so coffee with Jeff Bezos would be pretty interesting to me.
Q
What has been the biggest hurdle you’ve dealt with that you didn’t anticipate when starting Beam Dental?
Fro: The sheer complexity of our business model makes operating and measuring the company really difficult beyond my expectation. We are designing and manufacturing hardware, shipping and maintaining multiple digital products, and delivering a regulated financial services product simultaneously.
Q Q
What have you as the founder and/or CEO learned about yourself since you began this journey?
Fro: One of my areas of concentration in the business is attaching context to everything possible. I’ve found that really talented people want to understand the context of each decision, strategic insight, or operating principle; once that context is well understood, people are able to make more independent, better informed decisions.
If you were to invest in one thing in Columbus (aspect, infrastructure, etc.) what would it be? Why?
Fro: A student loan debt tax credit to help more people afford homes in Columbus and attract young talent to the region. Also, Columbus needs better tasting tap water!
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