Cincy — Consumer CPG * Health -- Venture Capital in Cincinnati

Cincinnati sits inside a real, three-city Ohio contrast that says more about anchor permanence than population size does. Procter & Gamble has been headquartered here, without interruption, since its founding in 1837 -- 188 years and counting, one of the longest unbroken corporate HQ tenures of any major American company. Ninety miles north, Cleveland tells a different story: Standard Oil was founded there in 1870, grew into the largest oil company in the world, and moved its headquarters to New York in 1885 -- a real anchor that grew here and left the moment it got big enough to. Further north still, Youngstown tells the sharpest version: on September 19, 1977 -- "Black Monday" -- Youngstown Sheet and Tube abruptly closed its Campbell Works and laid off more than 5,000 workers with almost no warning, the event popularly remembered as the birth of the Rust Belt. Same state, three real anchor-permanence outcomes: never left, grew and left, collapsed overnight. Cincinnati's startup layer runs on real, P&G/Kroger-backed infrastructure -- The Brandery, whose own portfolio (Roadtrippers, Ahalogy, Martin, Skip, and dozens more, several since acquired) is real and growing here, though the exact investment/exit tally varies by tracker (public counts range from the low-70s to the high-90s) -- and CincyTech, Ohio's public-private seed fund, already on file before this edition existed.

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Region Stats

Total firms 50

VC / investors 2

Companies 44

Schools 4

People 0

By Who For

Undetermined 41

Consumer / Retail 2

Agriculture & Food 1

Known For

Consumer CPG * Health -- Venture Capital