Community Impact Awards: Quick Time

Ron Seide had the right idea but he had no clue how to make it happen.

While working at Cisco Systems, Seide became interested in creating Wi-Fi technology in rugged radio environments such as warehouses and large spaces like Walmart. But when Cisco decided to discontinue its wireless technology, Seide and four colleagues began planning for their own high-tech company.

In early 2006, they founded Summit Data Communications, a wireless networking solutions business. “We certainly knew quite a lot about the industry that we were hoping to serve,” Seide says. “What we didn’t know was the nuts and bolts of starting a business.”

Then he discovered the Akron Industrial Incubator (now the Akron Global Business Accelerator), which has been helping businesses get their start since 1983.

Housed in Akron’s Canal Place, the incubator provides conference rooms, labs and reasonably priced office space to its tenants.

But Seide benefited most from things he couldn’t touch. He had planned to focus on wireless network solutions for manufacturers of hand-held and vehicle-mount data terminals, but a larger market was emerging in health care.

Summit believed its technology could benefit doctors, nurses and other medical staff members who need their devices to be mobile, so it decided to add health care manufacturers to its market. Akron Global Business Accelerator agreed about the usefulness and stepped in to help.

So the accelerator arranged for Seide and his fellow techies to tour Akron General Medical Center and Summa Health System and meet with IT department heads to get a sense of how local area network technology would operate in heath care.

Today, Summit Data has grown to more than 20 employees. What started with no office space has expanded to 3,000 square feet for computers, workbenches and other machines to test equipment.

And all it took was a little nudge from the Akron Global Business Accelerator.

The program now boasts 49 member companies (a number that’s double what it was 1 1/2 years ago) and more than 250 tenant employees.

Since December 2008, 12 new high-tech firms have moved in, and member companies have attracted $16.4 million in new investment
capital.

“It’s a very creative environment with so many entrepreneurs in various states of startup that not only share problems and solutions, but can even look at times to share resources,” says Mike LeHere, chief executive officer of Akron Global Business Accelerator. “Being an entrepreneur is a lonely situation. … But here you’ve got a strong support network.”

And Seide agrees. “Starting a business can be a stressful thing,” he says. “Just being around other folks who are going through that same experience is really helpful."

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