Central Ohio Grows More Than Corn

This April, Manta Media, based in Columbus, Ohio, raised $44 million from Norwest Venture Partners, which is headquartered in Palo Alto, California (aka Silicon Valley).

Manta provides a free online database and social media platform for businesses to share their marketing and contact data.  As of early 2012, Manta had 89 million businesses listed in its database; it also reports 25 million unique visitors monthly and 3,000 new small businesses joining daily.

As for Ohio, it was ranked 19 among states based on total venture capital dollars invested in 2011, as highlighted March 2012 by Laura Tomaka at The Council of State Governments (see chart below).  Downloadable data is available from the State Science & Technology Institute (SSTi) based in Westerville, Ohio.  Also, a user friendly dynamic map showing state-by-state per capita venture capital investments is available at St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s website.