What inspired you to create your business?

About a year and a half ago I was in the job market looking for a new job and I couldn’t do that from my house because I have small children. So I went looking for a place outside my house where I could sit down and look for work and things like that, and I found that there really wasn’t a good place to do that in Canton. There are coffee shops, there are libraries, but at all of those places you can’t leave your belongings and leave and come back, and phone calls aren’t really a good for that situation either. So I went looking for a coworking space and found out that Canton didn’t have one.

What are some of the most important things you’ve learned while building your business?

One of the most important things I have learned in Canton while starting a new business is that when I do find someone involved with the city or another business who’s willing to talk with me and advise me and help me, that it’s important that I ask them if they know anyone else that could also be of potential advice to me and to actually make sure that I have them introduce me to that person because that makes the connection a lot easier to obtain.

Why are coworking spaces important?

Coworking spaces, in general, are really important for cities not just for the reasons I needed them, but for small businesses, entrepreneurs and remote workers. Sometimes that’s the best situation for them to be able to get their work done and get their businesses started.

What has surprised you about the Stark County Impact Program?

I think what surprised me the most about the Impact Program was that the other companies in the program were so ready to be friendly with each other and open about how to give each other ideas to help not only their own businesses but everyone else’s businesses.

What are your future plans for your business?

I hope that in a year from now or in the future that Canton Work Space is able to expand either in my same location or somewhere new so that I can offer more to our members. I especially hope, though, that in the future when someone starts a new business or is looking for a place to work, that other people say, “Hey, you have to go to Canton Work Space. There’s a lot of other people there that also can help you get started.”

Learn more about Canton Work Space at cantonworkspace.com. Then, come watch Neil pitch his business live on August 14 for a chance to win up to $10,000 at the Stark County Entrepreneur Showcase.

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What inspired you to create your business?

I was at the Akron-Canton Airport and I saw these big billboards inside on a gigantic TV. I thought that small businesses could also use that technology, so I began looking for it and couldn’t find it. So, I decided to start Recastio so that I could help market small businesses to their clients.

What separates Recastio from the competition?

The ease of use. You can go to Walmart or Target and get an Amazon Fire Stick, and that’s what our platform is built on. You can then go on the website at recastio.com, get a subscription code and have your TV set up as a digital display in a matter of a half-hour. As long as it takes you to get to Walmart and back, really.

What advice would you offer other entrepreneurs who need help and are considering reaching out?

One of the things that I would say is, as an entrepreneur, you don’t really think about the back end – about the financials, and the market strategies, and the market segments so much. You’re thinking about the product and how to take this product and really grow. So what JumpStart has done is really go from the very beginning to get the marketing plan, the market segmentation and the financial portion done.

What is one of the most important thing that Canton offers entrepreneurs?

The location of JumpStart. It’s centrally located. It’s right off of route 30 and 77, right downtown. It’s really a busy place and everybody really knows where it’s at. So that’s one of the benefits. The other benefit is, if I’m located in downtown Canton, I could easily get to Akron or Cleveland, or even Columbus or Pittsburgh. It’s all right here, right in the middle of all three.

What are your future plans for your business?

Of course we would all like to have more customers, but specifically, I would like to gain customers that have multiple locations. Say, you’re a tire shop, and you have five locations. You could actually control your TVs or your screens from one central location.

Learn more about Recastio at recastio.com. Then, come watch Glenn pitch his business live on August 14 for a chance to win up to $10,000 at the Stark County Entrepreneur Showcase.

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What inspired you to create your business?

The idea came about because one of our customers was receiving large amounts of data every single morning and we needed to come up with a way to automate this. We then decided to build a data-templating system for automatically importing more than 2 million data points every single day.

I’ve been writing software for 20 years (since I was 9 years old) and I’ve noticed a trend of issues with data conversion. Every single company that deals with any kind of software has a data conversion problem and that was the basis for our software, so we built that on top of the needs of one of our clients and we use it every day now.

What is your biggest takeaway from the Stark County Impact Program?

The startup world can be a very long, foggy and hard road for a lot of people. It’s very new to me. I’ve been in business for two years, but doing something like this is a very different scale. And something the program helped me realize is that there is a big difference between a lifestyle business and a high-growth business, and the Impact Program helped us stay focused and be able to express our vision and present that to people who may be able to help us grow that vision.

What separates you from the competition?

Our competition is usually quite expensive or requires a lot of know-how. Our solution is a web-based tool that is simple to end-users and reusable, meaning it can apply to multiple companies simultaneously.

What’s the most important thing Canton has to offer entrepreneurs?

Canton has started drastically improving the infrastructure from what I can tell. And I think that’s probably the biggest benefit, is that this place will be growing as a result of those infrastructure changes. There’s a lot of networking opportunities in the area and that is continuing to grow. And I think the biggest thing is just knowing that Canton itself is entirely behind this type of growth and encouraging the growth of technology in the area.

What are your future plans for your business?

A year from now, I see myself doing a seed or Series A round for Daccta, as well as lightly managing my software development business, which will be run in parallel to also help the growth and development of Daccta.

Learn more about Eynon Software, LLC at eynon.software. Then, come watch Thomas pitch his business live on August 14 for a chance to win up to $10,000 at the Stark County Entrepreneur Showcase.

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