Mike Venerable talked to his predecessor, Bob Coy, in December when it was announced Venerable would step down as CEO of Cincinnati startup investment firm CincyTech.
“He told me, ‘Everybody stays a little too long. I was burned out, too,’” Venerable said.
Venerable departed CincyTech in January after 17 years there, including seven as CEO, largely because it had gotten to be too much for too long.
“I did it for a long time,” he told me in an exclusive interview. “That was the longest thing I’ve ever done (professionally). There’s the day-to-day worrying about things. For years I didn’t have a weekend or night to myself.
“Fundamentally, I was exhausted.”
It helped that CincyTech has a strong staff that keep its operations – considered a huge part of the Cincinnati startup ecosystem – powering ahead. In fact, he saw it as necessary to make the move.
Emma Off, who had been a partner with law firm Thompson Hine, replaced him in January.
“I wanted to make sure the team with Emma and the organization are in the right place to carry on,” he said.
He has plenty to be proud of during his time there. CincyTech has invested $87 million in 90 startups since launching its first fund in 2007 and attracted more than $1.7 billion in co-investment.
“The fuel is the capital,” he said. “We’ve invested in things that are going to change people’s lives."
Myonexus Therapeutics, Enable Injections, Genetesis, Kurome Therapeutics and others are companies he named on that list.
CincyTech also changed entrepreneurs’ lives.
“Somebody whose company didn’t work out came to me and said, ‘You changed my life when you invested in me,’” he said. “Failing provides a lot of lessons. You never know what somebody’s second act is going to be.”
Now he’s on his own second act, or maybe third.
While many would consider it a retirement, Venerable said someone told him it was more like a rewirement.
“I would say that’s true,” he said.
He says that because he’s not stepping away from the startup world. Far from it. He’s already engaging with others in the region and the state to focus on generating more capital for innovation in the region and concentrating on the industries were Ohio is strong.
“I’m not getting away from this kind of stuff,” he said. “The region is still wildly undercapitalized. I’m focused on trying to work on things that help us build scale in talent and capital.”
One of his focus areas is to target industries in which Ohio has strengths that can be expanded. Venerable mentioned aerospace, auto, energy and health care. The key: “All are being re-engineered by data and by AI,” he said.
“If we re-invest in those companies, we can build them up,” he said. “And if we don’t they’ll become laggards.”
It takes capital and talent by retaining students, Venerable said.
“We need to become the most wired, connected, forward-thinking state we possibly can be,” he said. "I'm looking to scale capital, talent and infrastructure to make sure we future-proof our economy in Ohio and Southwest Ohio."
Ohio has advantages, he said, including its relatively consistent government leadership that has been pro-business over the years.
“That’s a huge advantage,” he said. “We have to sell the state as a great investment. This is competitive for me. We need to think about how we compete with other states.”
Venerable’s roots run deep in the Buckeye State. He grew up in Hamilton and graduated from the University of Dayton.
He worked in Washington, D.C., in military intelligence as a Korean linguist before joining a software startup. He was a partner, and the company was sold in 1998. He stayed a couple of years before joining another startup.
But on Sept. 11, 2001, he was on a plane that was landing at LaGuardia Airport when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. About a year later, when he and his family still lived in Washington, D.C., the sniper attacks took place in that area.
“That was unnerving,” he said. “We decided to move back here.”
Venerable led the investment process at CincyTech from the time he joined the firm until he became CEO.
“I started there with no intention of doing that (CEO) job,” he said. “I didn’t come here for that job. I loved the creativity of entrepreneurs. But it became a really intense, challenging job.”
Now he’s still in the game, working on the bigger picture to keep Southwest Ohio and the Buckeye State growing and thriving in the startup and innovation world.
