Ray Leach, Jeffrey Stern and their colleagues at the recently launched O.H.I.O. Fund are trying to do something that’s never been done before — create an impact fund that invests in high-growth opportunities in Ohio’s future economy.
Leach is the fund’s president and founding managing director in Cleveland. He’s also the founding CEO of JumpStart Inc., the local venture development and capital organization, which he left more than a year ago to launch the Ohio High-growth Investment Opportunities (stylized as “O.H.I.O.”) Fund.
Stern is the fund’s co-founder and principal. He’s also a serial tech entrepreneur, co-founding Axuall, the health care workforce intelligence company in Cleveland, among other companies, and the creator/host of the Lay of the Land podcast.
Leach and Stern joined other venture capital heavy hitters in Columbus and Cincinnati to raise $108 million for the first closing of their fund in early July. The fund made its first investment around the same time: acquiring 148 acres of land in Sunbury, 10 miles north of New Albany, which is exploding with data centers and Intel’s semiconductor chip-making project.
The O.H.I.O. Fund is loosely patterned after Temasek, the global investment company in Singapore that started with a fund of $354 million Singapore dollars in 1974 and now has a fund worth SG$389 billion.
Leach and Stern, who live and work in Northeast Ohio, recently talked with the Cleveland Business Journal about the startup of their fund and the structural trends in which they plan to invest.
This article first appeared in Cleveland Business Journal on August 19th, 2024.