Great ideas can start anywhere. Turning them into companies, jobs, new technologies and economic growth requires something more.
In downtown Akron, Bounce Innovation Hub has built an environment designed to help make that happen.
The second floor of The Generator, Bounce’s on-site coworking space which features a variety of different workspaces for both collaborative and private coworking
Today, Bounce is one of Ohio’s largest entrepreneurial hubs, operating from a 300,000-square-fioot former tire manufacturing facility that has been transformed into a vibrant home for entrepreneurs, startups and innovators. More than 90 companies are represented within Bounce, alongside hundreds more entrepreneurs who access its programs, expertise and network throughout the year.
But the size of the building only tells part of the story.
Bounce’s mission is to catalyze entrepreneurship and innovation by providing the connections, resources and expertise needed to build a vibrant community for all. Increasingly, that means helping companies navigate one of the most difficult parts of innovation: moving a promising idea or technology toward a viable, growing business.
“Great ideas are everywhere,” says Bounce President and CEO Jessica Sublett. “The real work is creating the conditions around those ideas that allow them to move forward.”
Bounce Innovation Hub, located in downtown Akron, Ohio
BUILT FOR INNOVATION
Those conditions look different for every entrepreneur.
Inside Bounce, founders have access to coworking and office space, wet laboratories, light manufacturing space, conference and event facilities, and a community of other entrepreneurs building companies alongside them. They can also tap into programming, mentorship, professional expertise and connections to customers, capital and other resources throughout Northeast Ohio and beyond.
That combination of place, programming and connection is central to Bounce’s model.
The building itself reflects Akron’s history of making things. Once part of the B.F. Goodrich complex, the massive brick structure is now filled with companies developing new technologies, building products and solving problems across industries.
Its first two floors are home to the Generator, Bounce’s modern coworking and entrepreneurial community space. Elsewhere in the building are private offices, light manufacturing spaces and more than a dozen chemistry labs, creating an environment where companies at very different stages can find the space they need to build.
Just as important is the flexibility that space provides. An entrepreneur can enter the Bounce community with a coworking membership and very little overhead, move into an office as the company gains traction and eventually grow into larger office, laboratory or light manufacturing space without leaving the building or the community around them. Flexible leases and affordable space allow founders to invest precious early-stage resources in building their companies rather than infrastructure.
For a startup, that ability to grow in place matters. As companies add employees, develop products and reach new milestones, Bounce can grow alongside them, providing not just the physical space for the next stage, but continued access to the relationships, expertise and entrepreneurial community that helped them get there.
Bounce’s front desk in the main lobby of our building, leading to the first floor of The Generator
FROM TECHNOLOGY TO MARKET
Over the past several years, Bounce has increasingly focused its programming around sectors where Northeast Ohio has deep expertise and a meaningful opportunity to compete.
In advanced materials, that work comes to life through the Synthe6 Materials Accelerator, Bounce’s year-long accelerator for
companies developing new materials and polymer technologies. Closely connected to Northeast Ohio’s Polymer Industry Cluster, Synthe6 builds on one of the region’s most significant industry strengths while helping a new generation of materials companies reach the market.
The program combines technical and business commercialization support, helping founders advance not only the readiness of their Technology, but their understanding of customers, markets and manufacturing.
Synthe6 connects startups with experienced mentors, industry experts, potential customers and manufacturing partners while helping companies address the technical and commercial roadblocks that can prevent hard technologies from reaching the market. Its inaugural cohort brought together nine startups working to translate advanced technologies into real-world applications.
The Founder of Share+Solve, one of Bounce’s programming clients, pitching on stage during the Startup Showcase
In healthcare, Kinetic: Healthcare Innovation in Motion supports the commercialization of medical technologies through a partnership between Bounce and Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED). By combining Bounce’s entrepreneurial and commercialization expertise with NEOMED’s deep healthcare knowledge and network, Kinetic helps innovators navigate the long and complex path between promising medical innovation and market adoption.
And for software and technology-enabled companies, Flywheel provides continuum of support with a strong focus on one of the fundamentals of company building: customers and revenue. Rather than treating entrepreneurship as a single program or moment in time, Flywheel is designed to support founders as their needs change from early validation through growth.
Different industries require different expertise, timelines and resources. Bounce’s approach recognizes those differences while keeping the ultimate objective the same: helping more promising companies successfully move from innovation to commercialization and growth.
The Founder of TeachRN, one of Bounce’s programming clients, pitching on stage during the Startup Showcase
A FRONT DOOR TO SOMETHING BIGGER
Bounce recognizes that no single organization can provide everything an entrepreneur needs. That philosophy has shaped its role well beyond its own building.
Bounce works closely with entrepreneurial support organizations, universities, economic development partners, corporations, investors and public-sector leaders across Northeast Ohio and the state. When another organization is better positioned to help a founder take the next step, making that connection is part of the job. It is a philosophy rooted in the belief that the success of the ecosystem matters more than ownership of an individual entrepreneur.
For founders, that means the network becomes an asset. The right introduction can lead to technical expertise, a first customer, a manufacturing partner, an investment or simply the person who knows how to solve the next problem.
For Ohio, those connections help ensure that more of the ideas being developed in its universities, laboratories, companies and communities have an opportunity to create value here.
“We want entrepreneurs to see Ohio as a place where they can find what they need to build,” Sublett says. “Sometimes Bounce can provide that directly. Other times our greatest value is knowing who can.”
Narrative Digital Media, a multimedia video company that supports businesses with creative, high-quality video content, located on the 7th floor of Bounce Innovation Hub
TURNING INNOVATION INTO ECONOMIC VALUE
Ultimately, Bounce’s work is about more than helping companies start. It is about helping innovation translate into economic value: companies growing, technologies reaching the market, jobs being created and capital flowing into businesses with the potential to shape Ohio’s future.
The impact is measurable. In 2025 alone, Bounce-supported companies reported more than $43 million in capital raised and nearly 28fi jobs created or retained, providing a snapshot of the economic activity generated by entrepreneurs across the Bounce community.
Impact is also visible when a founder takes the stage at Bounce’s annual Startup Showcase to pitch a company that once existed only as an idea. It happens when a startup moves into its first office or laboratory, hires its first employees, secures a major customer or attracts the capital needed to reach its next stage.
And it happens when a company chooses to build its future in Ohio.
Those milestones belong to the entrepreneurs doing the extraordinarily hard work of building companies. Bounce’s role is to create an environment around them that makes progress more possible: providing the space, expertise, connections and community that can help turn an idea into a business and a business into economic growth.
Vigeo Gardens, a hydroponic farm growing microgreens and other produce to local grocers and restaurants, located on the 3rd floor of Bounce Innovation Hub
BUILDING WHAT COMES NEXT
For Bounce, the next chapter is about going deeper. The organization is continuing to strengthen its sector-specific commercialization programs, modernize the infrastructure available to technology companies and build stronger connections between startups and the industries that can help bring their innovations to market.
That work is increasingly regional and statewide in nature. Ohio has spent decades building significant assets around research, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, polymers and materials, software, capital and entrepreneurship. The opportunity now is to connect those assets in ways that allow innovation to move faster and companies to grow here.
Bounce intends to be part of that connective tissue.
Its future is not simply about filling a 300,000-square-fioot building or serving more entrepreneurs. It is about helping create an environment where ambitious founders can take ambitious ideas further, where technologies developed in Ohio have a clearer path to market, and where the economic value created by innovation has an opportunity to stay and grow in the state.
Because the measure of a great innovation hub is not what happens inside its walls.
It is whạt hạppens becạuse of them.
The winner of Bounce’s annual Startup Showcase pitch competition poses with a check awarding the winning founder with $5,000 for their business
