It’s been pretty quiet at the offices of HCDC lately. But Antony Seppi, the newly promoted business center director at the Norwood-based incubator, is looking forward to turning up the volume in 2021.
Not in a “return-to-normal-Covid-is-finally-over” kind of way. In his role, he wants HCDC to be a much more vocal voice in the region’s startup community.
The organization, founded in 1983, has played been a significant, but quiet, player over the years. In its own words, HCDC, formerly the Hamilton County Development Co., has nurtured over 300 resident companies, financed over $1 billion in projects and helped attract and create tens of thousands of jobs.
Seppi wants to do more.
“We execute, and we get things done and that’s what we’re known for – getting startups funded and turning them into viable businesses. But I’d like to make some more noise going forward,” he told me. “The quiet tag is fine, but we need to be recognized and put ourselves out there. We need that visibility.”
Seppi thinks HCDC is poised to do just that. In 2020, while navigating the pandemic like most businesses, the organization made an about-face and shifted services, like coaching and programming, to online. That has landed it at least six new clients in the past 120 days, said Patrick Longo, HCDC’s president and CEO, including Renter Mentor, a Columbus-based startup that helps connect people to affordable housing, and Confab, a Cincinnati company that wants to make online retail shopping more social. HCDC works with 51 clients overall.
Longo announced Seppi’s formal promotion via LinkedIn in November. Seppi, former co-founder of Hamilton Mill, an incubator in Butler County focused on clean tech and advanced manufacturing, and Pipeline H20, a now paused water-focused accelerator, had been serving as HCDC’s interim business center director since August, since his predecessor, Theresa Sedlack, took a job at Miami University. He’s been with HCDC as a business coach, advisor and mentor since 2018.
“Antony has continued to keep our incubation program operating at a very high level [and] is a known commodity to CincyTech, Cintrifuse, Queen City Angels and University of Cincinnati, just to name a few of HCDC's many collaborators,” Longo wrote. “I truly believe that the business center is in good hands.”
Seppi, as part of an effort to be more visible, said HCDC played a big role in StartupCincy Week in October. He would like to see the organization participate in more events – possibly host some under its own brand in the future.
“Prior to Covid, we had a really attractive physical community. We had over 300 people coming and going on a daily basis, so how do we translate that into a digital one?” Seppi said. “With the world going more virtual, there’s an opportunity for us to reach outside our comfort zone. Obviously we’re very tied to Cincinnati and Ohio, and that’s where our stakeholders are, but I think if we can bring in a startup like from Australia to Cincinnati, that’s a great economic development story. Reaching out to companies in California, New York or Boston and working with them as part of the move to virtual. That’s what we want to see.”
