Ocean Accelerator and Unpolished, two influential Cincinnati-based organizations, have expanded the role of faith in the entrepreneurial process. Unpolished was conceived of and launched within the Crossroads Church, the nation’s fastest growing religious organization, by a group of entrepreneurs and Crossroads Church’s head pastor. They believed that faith and entrepreneurship should be integrated. Unpolished provides meetups and conferences where entrepreneurs share stories about finding life balance, learning from failure, and how to succeed. As one could expect, many exceptional ideas were passed back and forth in each of these meetings. One of these ideas was to fill a niche by establishing a faith-based startup accelerator in 2014. This manifested into Ocean Accelerator (or simply OCEAN), Cincinnati’s newest startup accelerator which gives startups seed funding and guidance in a variety of fields. A key aspect of OCEAN’s program is to help entrepreneurs look inwards at themselves to find balance and happiness. This in turn helps establish free-flowing ideas and better collaboration. In OCEAN’s view, high development comes by utilizing an inviting work environment and interesting, valuable work. Combine this with active, interesting and value-creating work, and a company gives itself the ability to grow rapidly. OCEAN’s success is easily seen in the numbers. In their two previous classes, there were 19 alumni, 50% of the companies remained in Cincinnati, $7 Million in capital was raised, and 50 jobs were created. OCEAN’s Demo Day, when their startups present to the world, had a 2,500 live audience, and had a digital audience of 15,000.
In an exciting new development, OCEAN and Unpolished have merged together to form a new entity called Agora Endeavors. Its goal is to enrich the modern marketplace by inspiring, equipping and developing entrepreneurs. Through Agora Endeavors’s program, over 5,000 entrepreneurs enter the market with the skills and knowledge to change their communities for the better. Agora Endeavors operates a high-tech startup accelerator and a fee-based training program designed to investigate lifestyles of small business. This content comes to life through combining OCEAN and Unpolished events where founders come to experience how faith impacts the marketplace. These include:
Unpolished Conference – A high-octane conference in September that has drawn over 2,300 attendees from across the country in the first two years. 91% of attendees identify as aspiring or already existing small business owners.
Unpolished Connect Events – 400 participants attend our seven networking events that occur every six weeks. These evening events feature entrepreneurs telling their stories of success and failure followed by an hour of networking.
OCEAN Demo Day – OCEAN’s hi-tech entrepreneurs have pitched to over 2,000 attendees in annual event held each May. This event is also streamed live to over 3,000 additional potential investors and customers.
With OCEAN’s accelerator program, and Unpolished’s capacity to train 280 entrepreneurs each year, Agora Endeavors will help manufacturing, retail, food, and other small businesses generate 2,200 jobs by 2020. This new development is huge for Cincinnati as well as the rest of the nation, as it undoubtedly expands the outlook for small business and entrepreneurship across the nation. OCEAN released their third class of startups, which features geographically and ethnically diverse companies.
