Central Ohio Matters
Central Ohio Matters is a podcast where hosts Michelle Gatchell and Ryan Rivers discuss the issues shaping Central Ohio's future. Each episode features in-depth conversations with local leaders, visionaries, and changemakers driving progress in Central Ohio. These conversations offer insights into our communities' challenges and the solutions being crafted to move them forward.
Central Ohio Matters covers government policies, healthcare challenges, housing and business developments, transportation solutions, education, and innovation. It is your guide to understanding and engaging with the pulse of Central Ohio.
You can listen to Central Ohio Matters on WVXG 95.1 FM (Marion and Morrow Counties), WXGT 92.9 FM, 1550 AM (Franklin, Delaware, and Licking Counties), and WDLR 96.7 FM, 1270 AM (Delaware and Union Counties).
Find it also on your favorite podcast streaming sites.
Central Ohio Matters
Grit, Growth and Green Roads: How One "Ecopreneur" is Reshaping Central Ohio's Future
Steve Flaherty doesn't just talk about entrepreneurship—he embodies it. As founder and CEO of NECO Tech, he's pioneering sustainable asphalt solutions while simultaneously helping build Delaware County's entrepreneurial ecosystem through his work with Ohio Wesleyan University.
"The number one thing is grit," Flaherty explains when asked what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur today. This perseverance philosophy has guided his remarkable journey from MBA student to "ecopreneur," developing innovative road materials that reduce carbon footprints without sacrificing performance. Through methodical research, strategic patience, and what he calls "founder therapy" with fellow entrepreneurs, Flaherty navigated the challenging path from concept to commercial success.
What makes Flaherty's perspective particularly valuable is his dual experience on both sides of public-private partnerships. Having served as a township trustee, he articulates with rare clarity the economic realities that make thoughtful development essential for community prosperity.
The story behind NECO Tech perfectly illustrates Flaherty's entrepreneurial philosophy. Rather than rushing an unproven concept to market, he "kept showing up" at industry events for years, building relationships and refining his approach until securing over $3.1 million in non-dilutive capital through Air Force research contracts. This patient, performance-based approach exemplifies his definition of sustainability: "Being better than we were yesterday without negatively impacting tomorrow."
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, community leader, or simply someone interested in how Central Ohio is evolving, this conversation offers valuable insights into building businesses and communities that last. Discover how grit, innovation, and strategic thinking are reshaping our region's future, one sustainable road at a time.
Welcome to Central Ohio Matters, the podcast where we delve into the issues that shape Central Ohio's future. Each episode features in-depth conversations with local leaders, visionaries and changemakers driving progress in our region. These conversations offer insights into the challenges our communities face and the solutions being crafted to move them forward. Here are your hosts, michelle Gatchel and Ryan Rivers them forward.
Speaker 2:Here are your hosts, michelle Gatchel and Ryan Rivers. All right, we've got a great episode for you today. We are going to Delaware, ohio, and we're going to talk to Steve Flaherty. He's the CEO and founder of Nikko Tech, a professed ecopreneur and ecosystem builder. And, steve, thank you so much for joining Ryan and I.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, happy to be here. Thanks for the time.
Speaker 2:You know, gosh, you are the pure example of an entrepreneur, but you also are fantastic at helping other entrepreneurs get their foot on the ground and run, and you're working with Ohio Wesleyan, which is where you are now as part of their entrepreneurial center. Tell me a little bit, or tell us a little bit, about what it takes to be an entrepreneur right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean, it takes a lot, you know, I think it's a loaded question, but I'd say the number one thing is grit. You know perseverance. I mean the obstacles that get thrown at you are not, you know, of the normal variety, so you have to be willing to take the punches and keep going. I truly think that that's one of the defining factors between successful people, successful entrepreneurs, and non-successful entrepreneurs, is you just have to keep going. It's not so much that companies necessarily fail, it's that they're not given the right. You know resources, energy, time, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I think perseverance and grit is, you know, is paramount, and when we're talking resources, you know what is the hardest, some of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to come by.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean. So the number one answer is always going to be capital. Right, you need, you need, you need capital to to do anything. However, you know capital comes in many forms, and so you often get questioned about you know what's the best way to finance a business, and you know, do you take a bank loan? Do you, you know, get government grants? Do you? You know, figure out, you know, revenue, sales, et cetera, et cetera. The answer is all of them right. So the best way to do it is all of them so, but it is a.
Speaker 3:It's a lonely journey A lot of the times. You know so because you're you're doing a little, especially you know when you're. You start out you might be a solopreneur and then you know you add a team, but you're doing a lot of things behind the scenes, you're wearing many hats, and so it's easy to get blinders on and focus only on your business and not look outward to understand the kind of the wayfinding of the resources that exist out there. So you know that's a challenge. You know whether it's because you're so focused on the business or you know you think you've got all the answers because nobody else can understand what you're doing. I think we often get blinders on and not look outward. So the resources exist from mentors. Asking someone who's been where you want to go Doesn't have to be the same industry, doesn't have to be the same archety you know archetype or anything, but just getting you know mentorship from other people.
Speaker 3:I'm a huge fan of what I would dub. I've done buddy sessions or mastermind groups where you talk to other entrepreneurs and you know you call it, you know, founder therapy Because a lot of the times you know it's hey, I'm going through this and I don't, I don't know where to start, I don't know where. You know it's hey, I'm going through this and I don't know where to start, I don't know where. You know what the finish line looks like and a lot of the times other entrepreneurs have been through those same or similar journeys. That, even if it's just listening, you know it's someone that you know you can talk to and relate with, that you know you can talk to and relate with.
Speaker 3:So it's a magnitude of things. But you know, I would say you know resources are out there and that's the biggest thing you know. You mentioned me helping other entrepreneurs. It's it's really about paying it forward. I've had a number of olive branches that have been extended to me that there was no fair trade at the time. There's no way I could have given them enough money, enough, you know, revenue contract whatever to exchange for the piece of information or the resource that they extended to me. So I think there's a rule of reciprocity that exists, if that makes sense amongst you know, kind of all entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:So with the Ohio Wesleyan Entrepreneurial Center. It was created as a unique collaboration with private and government entities, correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, you've got the university itself. So which is behind me here? So it's located on campus at Ohio Wesleyan, and then both the city and the county are partners and participants in the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:And then do they also bring in local private entities to that as well.
Speaker 3:Well, so they create the hub for where private companies can be created. So the idea is that they created the space where the innovation can happen. So, whether you want to, just you know there's offices, you know that you can lease and participate in, but then just a it's kind of a hive of activity, right? So there's local people that host different events. You know whether it's meetup groups, whether there's classes you know we've had Saturday classes for you know real estate and you know your next home business or whatever it may, be all out of here. So it's designed to be an entrepreneurial gathering point for the community. So Delaware County at large and Central Ohio at large, quite honestly, Great.
Speaker 4:So, Steve, outside of the entrepreneurial world, I know you've spent some time as an elected official and on the public side what do you see as the biggest challenges for Central Ohio and as far as growth and expanding our business community?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to say the biggest challenge is handling growth right, both from a a infrastructure perspective of you know what we need to not only, you know, keep the companies here, but attract new companies. I know not everybody always wants to hear about change and development, but that is critical to our lifeblood and our future. You know it's. It's a hard area in the sense that you know. So, the political affiliation yes, I was a township trustee in Berlin. You know campaigning and talking to people and just listening to residents, and you've got one you know that you walk up to and they're like hey, you know, yeah, I'll support you, just don't ever put any parks in here. You know we like the land the way it is and you know you go right next door to the next door neighbor and he's like you know I'll support you, but can you bring some parks here? You know we're missing all the amenities that we had over in XYZ. You know, ville, and we don't have that here, and so it's it's a blend, it's a blended area. You've got, you know, people that move here that want the fields to stay fields. You know, which does not economically help us out in the future.
Speaker 3:So, because, if you, if you look at it from just a logical standpoint of how taxpayer dollars are spent, especially in the local jurisdictions. So the cities have income tax, the townships do not. So you get down to the cost of maintaining a residential neighborhood. Eventually the township is paying for that out of their own pocket or their own general fund. The maintaining of the roads and the properties, those all go away after the original development and so it is a losing battle. We used to look at it for every dollar of income tax that we brought in, we'd be spending $2.25 to $2.75 per residential neighborhood for that same piece, and that's gone up with inflation. And you know infrastructure costs. For a commercial area you'd spend 50 to 75 cents. So you're actually, you know, profiting off of that because they have common access agreements, common area management agreements, where they're maintaining the space that they have. And then, if you do it properly, you're putting in a joint economic development district or something where you're actually participating. The township can't be a tax collector, but a municipality can, and you're benefiting off of the economic wealth that's created.
Speaker 3:That's all development talk, right. And so most residents don't wanna hear that and they don't want the intels of the world coming to their local area. They don't want that. You know boutique manufacturing or warehouse, you know thing to go up. What you have to keep in mind is that's what progresses us forward. That's what puts Ohio on the map. People are wanting to locate here. So if you look at the population curve, there's been maps going around lately about how most of Ohio is draining or losing population, except for the Columbus cluster, a little bit down by Cincinnati and a little bit up by Cleveland, and that speaks to the economic development that is being done.
Speaker 3:But that's job creation. That's security. Economic development that is being done, but that's job creation. That's security. That's what allows us to make sure that we're able to cover the maintenance on your roads. So when people want to talk about how the roads are bad, and you know potholes everywhere and everything, it's like that's because the local infrastructure, tax and state funding and everything has gotten, you know, reduced over time and so we have to make up for it in other ways, which usually is economic development. And you know new businesses, new growth, and so it's tough because you're in a place that you're watching cornfields turn into parking lots and you know manufacturing centers or retail, or you know any other X, y, z apartments, right Houses. It's a tough battle but I think when you look at it logically and you look at not necessarily the, don't focus so much on the pure zoning aspect of things, of what's coming or what business would be located there, but more how what we try to do in Berlin, serving both as trustee and then on the zoning board for six years to the developers don't bring me more rooftops, Like, bring me community, because I can't, I don't.
Speaker 3:You know we didn't have a parks department. Some of the townships have parks department. The cities obviously do. But don't just bring me rooftops. You know some of the cities in central Ohio want that because it's income tax. We want community. Preserve our rural core and our rural character, understanding that we're going to be growing and expanding, that that field is no longer going to be a field. So bring the community and that field feel as much as you possibly can with us. So you know, have community centers.
Speaker 3:You know if you you look at, like the Evans Farm development, that that that first town center area is bustling. So you're seeing people coming to those gathering points, usually breweries or something or restaurants. But they're coming to those gathering points. They're hosting their own neighborhood events, their own Christmas tree lightings, stuff that the township and or the cities used to have to pick up. And I think that's where we see kind of the suburban sprawl. If you will, going is to where you have these interconnected neighborhoods that are hosting their own community things, their own functions. Their own functions, not just an organization, an HOA, that just collects your dues and maintains the front landscaping or something, but truly creating community for all of us to be able to.
Speaker 3:You know, I've got five kids. We don't, we don't have that in our neighborhood. You know, we've looked at. You know, moving to that, you know, because we don't have the community stuff, we go to the township events and everything. But you look at neighbors. Then you know, you go to the schools and they're like, oh yeah, our neighborhood's having a blah, blah, blah and it's like, oh, you know, like during COVID since I own a food truck business as well, you know we had food trucks come out. You know, and you know, do the food truck thing in the neighborhood and that was about the closest we got to the quote the community neighborhoods.
Speaker 4:So it's a tough space to be, you need fish of all different sizes in the pond. But strategically for the future of Central Ohio, what, in your opinion, is the most desirable or strategic of your larger scale operations? What types of businesses do you think would be the most attractive for Central Ohio as our identity going forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no. So obviously, me, me, my, my own humble opinion here. I think commerce is good. I think Central Ohio, you know, we, we a logistics center because of the, if you, you know, hear the stats, you know you can reach anywhere within, you know, a day or two travel of Columbus, ohio, and they say the same thing about Indianapolis, nashville, atlanta, et cetera. But we are a logistics hub. I think that should stick to our edges, our fringes. So, you know, up at Marion, you know, exit 141, there or 140, great logistic hub, right, keep it out of the congestion of the city, out on the west side, down on the south side, in Obetz and Grove City and everything I think we've surrounded ourselves with kind of those logistical hubs which makes sense Inside, particularly Delaware County.
Speaker 3:You look at our, you know the, the affluency in Delaware County, the, the, the job base, the, the people that live here and the opportunities. We are a, you know, typically we have a higher educated working class, a professional, you know, class. I, you know, looked at when Honda, you know, is the largest economic development project in Ohio history, and then Intel got announced and I was on zoning and I actually, I guess, leaked a little bit. I heard that Intel was kind of coming or something I suggested. I heard a chip factory was coming. I suggested that it was Intel, and then the Gazette called me out and said I said it two weeks before they announced it and all that, but but if you look at that yeah, yeah, so you, just when you, when you're, when you're playing in different circles, you, you put two and two together.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's not like I had insider information or anything. You just you hear rumblings and you, where there's smoke there's fire. But Intel is the largest economic development project in Ohio history, right From a investment standpoint. Andrel just announced, and so they're now the largest single job creator, which is, you know, which is great. Andrel would not have come here without Intel coming here. So because they need access to some of those chips for the automation that they're doing.
Speaker 3:But if you look at that, as you draw a line from Marysville to the east side, over in Licking County, it goes right through Delaware and so we call that the innovation arc and the thought there is. You know you don't necessarily have to define the exact businesses you know sure I'd love to is. You know you don't necessarily have to define the exact businesses you know sure I'd love to live. You know land like NVIDIA or something you know up here for the workforce or whatever. But you look at companies like Vertiv. You know three years ago was a $6 billion market cap company. Now you know is almost eclipsing, until the sell off the other day with the AI scare. You know they're almost $60 billion and they're a long-term company headquartered in Westerville, a customer innovation and production center out in Delaware in the industrial part. That is, the companies that you don't hear about. You might see the name, you know. On community sponsorships, you go down to Ohio State. They have a you know a public tailgate down there. You know where. You know they've got it for their employees, but you know you go up and want to get a hot dog, you know they'll serve you one. You know you just say hi. Those are the types of companies that we want that are going to participate. They might be, you know, not from here, but they're going to locate here. They're going to bring people here. They're going to employ our residents and our citizens and provide new opportunities for, you know, our kids and then participate in the community. So I think that's more. What we create is that place where that can occur.
Speaker 3:So the industrial parks and stuff that we were looking up at 3637 with the Berlin Business Park, I was hellbent to get a. The World Bank actually has something called an eco-industrial park, where it doesn't matter what you put there from a what company standpoint matter what you put there from a what company standpoint, they are held to standards that are governed and a framework that's laid out by the World Bank. That, if it's, you know, you could put a lead factory there, right, dirty lead factory. It would be the cleanest and greenest lead factory in the world, you know so, if they could meet the standards. So, and it's about sustainable design, it's about corporate pathways, it's about lower emissions and everything, and so I think that's the trends that we're we're seeing is that you know this clean tech stuff, not, you know, not going all tree hugging.
Speaker 3:You know green stuff, all like that, but just being responsible, being responsible for you know the, the economic development and the community. So we define. You know the economic development and the community. So we define. You know, at Niko, you know our company sustainability, which I don't think just applies to emissions and all that. Being sustainable means that you are forever. You know continuing right, but being sustainable is being better than we were yesterday without negatively impacting tomorrow. So I think that's what we want to attract. We want companies that are going to come here, stay here, be here, have their families here and be part of our community and not be a vacuum on any of our resources or infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, steve, you mentioned Nikotech and I want to talk to you about that because, in a way, like when you were getting started and you were thinking about the concept for this, decarbonization of pavement was a big part of this right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean it was. It was about being exactly. You know how I just defined sustainability. We looked at it. You know I was not.
Speaker 3:You know, yes, I drive a Tesla, but it's not because of its environmental friendliness. My license plate is powered by coal. So if you see that, if you happen to see that driving around it's probably a blur because I like it for its speed, you know it's fun to drive that. You know I've got 12 minute commute to my office and 12 minutes back. That is my me time, separating between the chaos of five kids at home and, you know, making sure that I'm a good provider and father and husband and being CEO of a, of a, of a startup company which brings its own stresses Right. So that is my exhilarating time. That's why I bought the Tesla its own stresses, right. So that is my exhilarating time. That's why I bought the Tesla.
Speaker 3:But yeah, no, it started with, you know, being more sustainable. Looking at you know something I grew up down the street from a vice president at Kikosing. I thought all the orange barrels were Kikosing projects, so I thought they were like the biggest company in the world because you saw orange barrels everywhere. But you know looking at how that could be done more sustainably, not necessarily just from an emission standpoint, but just an efficient standpoint. You know, every single place I go and as soon as someone finds out we do asphalt or you know they, they're like, well, shit, you should come here, fix these roads, like everybody has bad roads right. That's like the notorious universal you know gotcha. So it was.
Speaker 3:How can we, you know, play a part to make that easier, better and quite honestly, I mean I love that industry. It is true American grit. Those people in that industry work hard. I know there's the old cliche of, you know, one person doing all the work and five people standing around. It's not like that. I mean it's blue collar and it's tough work and it's American work, which is awesome. So I love being part of that industry and I love, you know, playing a piece and it's evolution industry, and I love you know playing a piece and it's evolution.
Speaker 2:So research and development, wise, coming up with an asphalt that does use less of the carbon. And the issues how or where did you start?
Speaker 3:Well, so it actually came out of my MBA back in 2008. I was down at the University of Louisville. I'd gone to Miami University and I got a job here. That company acquired a company down in Louisville. Never being down there, I went and visited. I asked if they had an ice rink and they said they had two. And that's all I needed because I didn't play hockey still. And so I went down there and it was because of playing hockey that I actually met some of the guys from the Louisville club team and they were like, hey, why don't you come play for us? And I'm like, well, I've got eligibility left. Yeah, I'll come play hockey. How many classes do I got to take? And I found this entrepreneurship MBA In 2008.
Speaker 3:Entrepreneurship was was was out there and cool, but it was internal at at schools like there. They weren't huge departments, there weren't these you know, massive internal entrepreneurship competitions and such and so, but what they did have was intercollegiate entrepreneurship competitions. And so our professor had offered us, you know, to either stay in classes all the time or go out and compete on the venture circuit and that would count, you know, for credits and you could take either path. And I'm like, well, shit, I definitely want to do that. And so we we went out and we competed all over the world, really, with technologies. We had to pick something and, through one of our partners in the group, we got paired up on teams, voluntold who to be with, and one of the partners was pervy to a technology that was waste plastics and asphalt. And I was working in infrastructure at the time, you know, selling into the infrastructure market, municipalities, governments, contractors, etc. And that I got it and I'm like, well, yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I know a little bit about the infrastructure and I was a huge SimCity fan growing up, so you know, I know how the roads got built, you know, and they needed the pipes underneath them in the, you know, before the houses went up. And you know, if you build a hotel without water, you weren't, you know, you'd bankrupt your city. So, yeah, so we competed with that and we pivoted it a couple times with things and I turned it into a plastic resin during the 2008 through 2010 kind of oil crisis because it was a larger market.
Speaker 3:And you know, we explored different things. We got down to 2000,. You know, 2010,. We graduated and we're looking at this thing, you know, we had created a real company. You had to create a real LLC or C Corp or something in order to compete. So we had a real company and we had venture terms thrown at us and I and I looked at it and they call it the valley of death and entrepreneurship, right? So how deep is the valley of death? How wide is it? And 2010,?
Speaker 3:Nobody was talking sustainability and construction or infrastructure, or you know, honestly, a lot of mainstream companies, right? So they were just talking about, you know, sustainability. Nobody really knew what it meant and a lot of it got politicized and it's like oh, if you like that, you must be a tree-hugging vegan, you know. And it's like no, like you can, it's okay to be sustainable without a R and a D attached to you. But what it told me was the market wasn't there yet. And if a market's not there, I do know one thing that it's going to cost you a lot of money to either wait it out or pull it to you, right? And so that was a decision in time at that moment that I was not willing to jeopardize my family and, you know, wasn't comfortable yet my own skin, you know, young, 25 year old, I think at the time, you know. So, you know, still cocky and ignorant to you know a lot of the world and yeah, I decided to not pursue it and put it on the back burner.
Speaker 3:But to the point I mentioned earlier, what I did is I kept showing up. I went to the trade shows in the asphalt industry. I went to the events, I talked to labs, even out, when my W2 job, I was selling automated meter reading systems or pipe valves and fittings to municipalities, I'd see a paving crew in town and I'd stop on my way, you know, to or from the customer and I just I picked their brain. I'm like, hey, what do you guys think? And I, so you kept the pulse on the industry right, just to see where it is. And I mean, you know, there's probably some weird people out there that saw me stop at a paving site and I was asking you know, hey, what do you think about sustainability? They're like get out of here, kid. Like you know, we don't give a shit about that. And um, the uh, uh, you just watched it evolve and watched what the trends going through the industry were.
Speaker 3:Um, you know, I used to get told you know that be careful, kid, because you might end up in a quarry. Um, because we like repaving roads every seven years, and it's like, oh, okay, well, I'd rather not, but okay, but you know you start looking at things as total cost of ownership, which is ultimately what kind of led me to. You know, trustee, you know I saw where Berlin was headed and where it was at and felt an obligation and my wife's one to not take too much. You know me talking and not doing at home. So you know she didn't want to hear me. You know complain about it. So she's like, well, what are you going to do about it? You're either going to, you know, stop talking about it because I don't care, or you're going to go do something. And it's like, okay, I'm going to run for trustee, um, and so that gave the other side of the perspective, uh, from from Nika's uh, uh, uh state. So that was four years as trustee that you know.
Speaker 3:I was now on the flip side. Instead of being the person trying to provide the services, I'm the person trying to provide the services, I'm the person paying for the services, while being fiscally responsible to the township's money, but also, you know, working with, you know for the residents, to make sure that we had good infrastructure. So that, honestly, was probably one of the best things for from NECO's take, I didn't have NECO at the time, you know, in a company format. It was, like I said, just showing up at the time. You know, in in a company format. It was, like I said, just showing up and kind of, you know, keeping pulse of the industry. I didn't launch it in its current form until 2019. But it did allow me to. You know, they say there's two sides to the street, so literally got to see both sides of the street.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, so you jumped in. Do we have any NECO Tech roads in Delaware?
Speaker 3:Not yet. So we are. No, I'm just kidding, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah.
Speaker 3:Delaware County's got very stringent engineers. We're working on. We just launched our first, our first full scale asphalt plant in September. First, our first full scale asphalt plant in September. So we're in the testing and we, you know, we paved some parking lots out there and we're doing some internal testing with stuff where the asphalt industry is one that does not forget. So you do not want to shoot yourself in the foot. So we are doing this. I guess we've got a little bit more luxury that we can do it with a performance-based approach where we didn't have to just go out and create a bunch of revenue. We've been, fortunate enough.
Speaker 3:I helped get the company non-dilutive capital through Air Force research contracts. So back to the financing thing. We would have had to take a long, you know a large amount of venture capital to start this. Instead we found ourselves, you know, through glutton and punishment, but landed some Air Force contracts. Those were R&D contracts. We licensed some technologies from the Army Corps of Engineers and we've done 16 Air Force contracts over the last five years, not performing like work on those bases, like traditional government contracting. These are R&D contracts where we brought innovation and technologies that we had either licensed or conceptualized and then took them through an R&D cycle, licensed or conceptualized, and then took them through an R&D cycle that allowed us to fund over $3.1 million of non-dilutive capital which allowed us to have that kind of runway to be able to pursue the asphalt plant side how it should be.
Speaker 3:So, in my opinion, being performance-based right, so not just putting stuff out there and then evolving it over. Be so, in my opinion, being performance based right, so not just putting stuff out there and then evolving it over time. And you know your first product is not great and then you, you know, change it. Roads are, you know, not forever, but they're, they're there, they should last a while. So it's really allowed us to hone our product and we signed a large investment deal last year. We've got a partnership with one of the world's largest asphalt producers and we've got a path to scale to, you know, 50 plus locations over the next six years, which none of that would be like.
Speaker 3:It's funny because my wife always gets on me about. You know the different events that I go network at, or you know, speaking at a conference or having a conversation in a random. You know the different events that I go network at. Or you know speaking at a conference or having a conversation in a random, you know, grocery aisle. Because I see something and talk to someone, right, and I can tell you every single pivotal point that, as small as it may have been, we would not be here in the same capacity as we are now without that conversation or event, or networking dinner or random grocery store conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. Well, we need to wrap this up, but how can people find out more? One about Ohio Wesleyan's Entrepreneurial Center?
Speaker 3:So I would say, come down, you know, to the center. It's open during school hours. Now A lot of the people are in and out, but Phil Smith is the executive director at the center. So finding him on campus or making an appointment with him to check it out, you know, or if I'm here, happy to you know, show someone around. But, and you can also find us out there on the website, you know, at the Delaware Entrepreneurial Center.
Speaker 2:Okay, and as far as NECOTECH, how do people find out more information about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, necotechcom and all major social medias. We're NECOTECH N-E-C-O-T-E-C-H. And yeah, we're headquartered out of the Entrepreneurial Center, so people can't catch us in here, but our asphalt plant's down on the south side, so we spend a lot of time at both places.
Speaker 2:South side of Delaware.
Speaker 3:South side of Columbus, down on Frank Road. Okay, okay, great Yep that's our first one, and then we'll be building a few more in Columbus and then expanding out from there. But it all starts here, yeah but it all starts here.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, Steve, I want to thank you so much for joining us and giving us all sorts of insights into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Speaker 3:No thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Steve Take care.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of Central Ohio Matters. Be sure to like, share and download. We cover government policies, healthcare challenges, housing and business developments, transportation solutions, education and innovation. If you know of a good story we should be talking about, go to the radio station website and fill out a contact form Directed to Michelle Gatchel, host of Central Ohio Matters. Thank you.