TBED service portfolio approach builds private innovation financing market

The launch of a new private equity firm in central Ohio is a reminder of the continuing ripple effects of a decades-long strategy of cultivating an innovation system. If the State of Ohio hadn’t created and provided sustained funding over decades for its integrated array of technology-based economic development programs, the founders of a newly launched private equity firm wouldn’t be in the position now to commit to helping more mid-market companies succeed in central Ohio.

Acceptd, an arts-centered platform development company, tapped several different aspects of Ohio’s Third Frontier Program at various times in the startup’s growth cycle before being acquired for a hefty price in 2021. The founders of that company have now launched a private equity firm to acquire middle-market companies.

The long-tail returns to Ohio from its decades-long commitment to building an innovation culture—in which financing individual innovation-driven companies is only one part—continue to pay dividends to Ohioans far beyond the standard performance metrics used by public economic development programs.

Successful regional innovation system building requires more than counting venture capital dollars attracted. A quick genealogy of Acceptd’s early financing is illustrative.

According to Pitchbook records, the first outside funds the founders of Acceptd received totaled $95,000 in grants and debt financing from three early elements of Ohio’s entrepreneurship support programs, including the entity that would evolve to become Rev1 Ventures.

Then, in May 2011, Acceptd joined 10x, one of several accelerators initially financed in part by Ohio’s Third Program. By November 2011, the young startup had raised $2M in its first early-stage venture capital round through the leadership of Rev1Ventures to secure additional investors, including the Ohio Tech Angels, a private VC firm, an individual angel, and creatively, the National Association for Music Education.

The Innovation Ohio Loan Fund, another element of Ohio’s TBED portfolio, provided a term loan in 2014 to help Acceptd grow, eventually to 25 employees.

In 2021, Acceptd was acquired by Togetherwork for an undisclosed eight-figure amount according to  a Feb. 4, 2025 Columbus Business First article. (subscription likely required for access)

Rev1 Ventures was one of the investors benefiting from the leveraged buyout in 2021. But Ohio’s returns continued beyond the capital Rev1 was able to reinvest in other Columbus-area innovation firms. The Columbus Business First article, written by senior reporter Carrie Ghose, reported the founders of Acceptd are committed in their new private equity firm, Noble Capital, “to acquire middle-market companies and help them become more efficient and grow—without sacrificing the culture the owner built.”

Ghose writes that the Acceptd founders aim for their private equity firm to succeed in an alternate model to PE’s stereotype of stripping their acquisitions of assets at the highest price. Instead, their plans for Noble Capital are to improve the profitability and efficiency of the middle-market companies they acquire, with a goal of transforming the businesses into employee-owned companies.

If successful, Noble Capital and its companies will join Rev1 Ventures and Acceptd, which remains in central Ohio, in providing returns from Ohio’s initial and sustained investments in building an innovation culture.

Stakeholders in regional innovation system development often can lose sight of the connections new successes have to all of the past hard work invested if the individual leaders weren’t involved in the originating vision years ago. TBED is the long game, and done well, yields rich and growing rewards.