John Dearborn
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John Dearborn is an entrepreneurial expert who has practical experience both leading high tech startups and building innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems to accelerate early-stage company growth.

John is President of JumpStart Inc., the Cleveland-based nonprofit organization transforming the economic impact of entrepreneurial ventures and the ecosystems supporting their growth. John’s guidance of JumpStart’s fundraising activities contributed to the organization assuming a role within Ohio as a leading entity for funding and coordination efforts of entrepreneurial support organizations within the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Prior to joining JumpStart, John was the CEO and a board member of 3Guppies, Inc., a mobile social networking company in Seattle, Washington. Before that he was Senior Vice President and General Manager for New Ventures in the Interactive Division for American Greetings, where he served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. John led new product and business development activities, partnering with leading companies to develop content offerings aimed specifically at the mobile and instant messaging audiences. John also started a self-funded company that developed the first image editor for the PC, which was later sold to a NASDAQ-traded company, Micrografx, in addition to holding senior management positions for a variety of venture-backed, public and privately-held companies, leading marketing, operations, business development, and sales organizations.

John is a board adviser to several Cleveland startups, offering expertise in the areas of strategy development, fundraising, and product development. John holds a BA in Administration from the University of New Hampshire, Durham.

Blog Entries by John Dearborn

What If Universities Recruited Entrepreneurs Like They Recruited Athletes?

27 Comments | Posted January 27, 2012 | 01/27/12 01:38 PM ET

Nearly half of American youth between ages 8 and 24 are enthusiastic about starting a business, or have already have started one, according to a Harris poll done for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2010.

What if big schools developed endowments to recruit entrepreneurship students? In the...

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Are Startup Incubators Inflating a Tech Bubble?

Posted September 2, 2011 | 09/02/11 02:16 PM ET

Xconomy's latest "Guide to Venture Incubators" tallied 64 venture incubators in the United States. That 2011 count is triple the number that existed in 2009. The new trend caused Xconomy's Wade Roush to wonder if this incremental growth indicates a bubble.

Wade thinks so, which isn't unreasonable....

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Startups: Run Hard, Patent Later

Posted June 30, 2011 | 06/30/11 01:00 PM ET

Our country's patent system is about to get an overhaul. Both the Senate and House have proposed separate but similar bills that would radically change the way patents are filed, granted and disputed.

It's yet to be seen what version will make it to the President's...

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Can Non-Profit Investors Help Grow The Next Silicon Valley?

Posted April 20, 2011 | 04/20/11 12:07 PM ET

A recent New York Times article dove into the idea of organically creating the next Silicon Valley. Its author, Steven Davidoff, reviewed the different ingredients public and private sectors are adding to their entrepreneurial ecosystems and touched on a growing consensus that government does, and should, have a...

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Interns: A Startup's New Best Friend

Posted March 17, 2011 | 03/17/11 11:40 AM ET

Tony Giordano is the typical biotech entrepreneur. As CEO of TheraVasc, he juggles fundraising with traveling the road to FDA approval, which can often times be long and costly, and doing it all with a lean workforce. But he's found an incredibly effective model to balance capital needs...

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Obama Spreads Innovation Agenda To Middle America

Posted March 2, 2011 | 03/02/11 01:35 PM ET

Imagine yourself running a non-profit in one of the hardest hit economic areas of the country and feeling like you're making progress with your mission of advancing economic development through a focus in innovation and entrepreneurship. Then, imagine the White House calling and saying that they were so excited by...

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