Big challenges. Passionate people. Smart solutions. This is what you’ll find at 1848 Ventures. We help business owners manage uncertainty and discover opportunity in risk. We’re not aiming for incremental improvement – we’re breaking new ground. And when we see opportunity for innovation, we have the freedom, resources, and culture to make it happen. We’re champions of business owners everywhere. After all, it’s this startup ethos and entrepreneurial spirit that 1848 Ventures – and our parent company, Westfield – was founded on. Westfield, a leading provider of commercial insurance, established 1848 Ventures in 2018 to expand beyond conventional property and casualty insurance products and address the broader risks small business owners face every day. We meet our customers where they are, partnering together to deliver digital solutions that improve their bottom line. We know that in order to succeed, we need the right people to make it happen. We start by building a team with a diverse set of voices, backgrounds, and experiences. We’re looking for the innovators. The pioneers. The change agents. The people who aren’t afraid to ask, “What if…?” and try it anyway. This is the place for self-starters, go-getters, and anyone who wants to see a good idea become a great reality. At 1848 Ventures, we help people build careers. Based in Northeast Ohio near Cleveland, our team members grow their creative and commercial skill sets, applying their talents to a wide range of portfolio concepts. And who we are drives what we do – our values empower a thriving culture that allows for true innovation, learning, and growth.

SIGNAL is a cloud-based Wireless Network Monitoring (WNM) platform that continuously troubleshoots the wireless network for performance issues - maximizing network uptime, device connectivity and network ROI. Unlike other providers, who monitor the network from the inside-out at the infrastructure level, 7SIGNAL operatives on the networks edge, monitoring the “air” and capturing the user experience on the client device.

airCFO understand that the future is being built every day by start-ups and small businesses. These companies have big aspirations, but even the best-laid plans will fall short without sound execution. airCFO’s mission is to partner with technology startups by managing their finance & accounting department, so they can focus on changing the world. airCFO was born from a pain point. Their founder was an early employee at Apartment List, a San Francisco startup, and his duties included accounting & financial work. When he left after a few years to return to the Midwest, the remaining team didn’t have time (or desire) to take over the accounting back office. They needed a reliable accounting solution as they scaled, but it was still too early to hire a full time CFO or Controller. Justin agreed to support Apartment List from Ohio so that the founders didn’t get pulled back into accounting and payroll, taxes and bookkeeping still got done each month on time. With that, Apartment List became airCFO’s first client. In the 4+ years since, airCFO has grown its presence from Silicon Valley to the Midwest. airCFO helps angel- and venture-backed startup founders by managing the accounting back office and acting as part-time CFO, so these startups have an experienced and trusted business partner from day one.

Alviere empowers every business to provide financial services to its customers quickly and easily. By providing an advanced single-integration plug and play software service, Alviere streamlines and automates the delivery of financial products like banking, mobile payments, card issuance, payment processing and cross-border currency exchange, enabling its clients to strengthen customer relationships, increase revenue and maximize profits.

AmpliFund is the leading purpose-built grant management platform designed for federal, state, local, and tribal governments to manage every phase of the grant management process. Our configurable solution provides a full suite of features needed by grant funders and recipients to maximize grant outcomes, meet performance standards, and increase compliance so they can achieve their missions.

Augment Therapy is designed by a pediatric physical therapist, Augment Therapy is an all-in-one solution to engage, motivate, and monitor kids needing therapeutic exercise.

Aware is a cloud intelligence platform that adopts the latest advancements in cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, and behavioral analytics to amplify enterprise value by monitoring the social graph. They harness the power of their platform’s insights into human behavior and interactivity to create great value for the enterprise. They have only built a fraction of what they imagined and now they are looking for incredibly talented people to help us achieve their aspirational vision.

Axuall is a workforce intelligence company built on a national real-time practitioner data network. Axuall offers a holistic approach to workforce analytics, including an integrated platform for driving smarter decisions and quickly onboarding providers. It enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth, and health plans to reduce onboarding and enrollment time while also providing unique, powerful data insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting.

Banyan's solution creates and maintains direct and instantaneous connections between clients and their freight carriers. Our focus is to enable collaborative relationships that will make both our customers and carriers operations more efficient and more profitable. Banyan is a completely carrier neutral solution. We focus on moving information between business systems and people. We empower over 27,000 manufacturers, distributors and third party logistics companies to increase profits by making better faster decisions on their freight operations.

Bessemer Management provides logistics services, equipment leasing, safety management, risk management, operations, sales, business development, customer service, accounting, settlements, billing, accounts receivable, tractor-trailer leasing, information technology, warehousing, and transportation management for inbound and outbound steel, aluminum, and machinery products.

Bezlio is a SaaS solution that provides you with the ability to mobilize your workforce and sales force by accessing your secure, on-premises data sources in real-time, on any mobile device, from anywhere! The Bezlio platform enables you to access your data with dashboards & mobile analytics, TV displays, mobile ERP or CRM apps, data mash-ups, self-service portals, and even predictive analytics and machine learning. Our unique technology also enhances other cloud platforms, such as Salesforce and Tableau, by embedding context-aware data from your on-premises data sources and providing write-back capabilities.

Rare Dermatological Diseases

Bounce Innovation Hub was founded in January 2018 and serves northeast Ohio entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses. Located in downtown Akron, the nonprofit organization comprises more than 300,000 square feet of coworking, event, meeting and professional office space. With more than 50 organizations in the building and almost 200 clients served, Bounce is positively affecting economic development in Greater Akron and throughout northeast Ohio.

BoxCast is a complete video streaming solution that fits in the palm of your hand. Anyone with a video camera can broadcast live video through their website, email, or social media. Viewers tune-in using any Internet connected computer, tablet, or modern smartphone.

Breakwall Analytics provides data, analytics, and IoT solutions to the hospitality industry through its BeerSmart brand. Developed for breweries interested in growth and efficiency, BeerSmart solutions are proven to increase sales, drive consumer engagement, and deliver insights to manage your business. In addition to our solutions for the beverage industry (developed with and for our sister company, Platform Beer Co), Breakwall has successfully completed several Client projects with startups as well as Fortune 500 organizations. Our work has been used in multiple industries including medical device, material handling, automotive, and manufacturing.

BRITE is Ohio’s only energy incubator, focused on supplying energy and tech startups with the guidance, resources and connections to get their products off the ground. While focusing on energy technologies and products & services including advanced materials, electronics, efficiency and control systems, BRITE’s entrepreneur in residence program means they can provide startups with the expertise necessary to enable their long-term success. Startups and companies of all sizes can utilize the BRITE Energy Labs, a well-equipped lab facilitating testing and development of energy storage and IoT solutions. Alongside core services for startups, BRITE offers a variety of event space spaces and BRITE Coworking memberships. BRITE houses 19 physical tenants in downtown Warren, Ohio. They have assisted over 200 startups since 2012 and has helped them secure over $60 million in funding.

An innovative web browsing platform or application designed to enhance the user experience and productivity.

Casentric offers CaseXpert™, a cloud-based, enterprise software-as-as-solution application that helps property and casualty insurance companies and self-insured organizations to evaluate and resolve third party personal injury and property damage claims more accurately, faster and for less money. CaseXpert™ currently consists of four components. The first component is used by claims handlers to evaluate comparative fault (or liability) among two or more actors who contribute to an event of loss. The second component is used to assess the extent of damages--such as pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages--that accrued from an event of loss. The third component, reporting, provides certain pre-set reports and analyses on open cases and closed cases. The company has developed a fourth component to provide real-time negotiation guidance to claims handlers during settlement negotiations to achieve improved settlement outcomes. The property and casualty insurance industry spends $225BN annually on personal injury and property damage claims. Companies spend approximately 75% of their revenue from insurance premiums on such claims, an amount that is rising due in part to rising medical costs. The vast majority of companies in the industry do not use any automated solution to help evaluate claims and, instead, rely on their individual claims handlers' experience to evaluate and resolve claims. This results in considerable variability in outcomes among claims handlers within companies and, importantly, no ability to measure outcomes and control expenses. Claims handlers today still substantially rely on handwritten, or unstructured, notes to record information, even though they handle far more cases and receive substantially less training than in the past. The industry is facing a significant shortage of claims handlers as many senior claims handlers will begin to retire in the next several years. Competing software applications exist, however, their penetration into the market has been hampered by their high complexity, high cost, and inability to reduce costs. Their proprietary ''blackbox'' approach also prevents claims handlers from understanding how to do their jobs and be successful in resolving claims. CaseXpert™ takes a very different approach from these applications. Its intuitive framework makes learning and using the application fast and easy. The application presents a common framework for isolating the elements of a case and forcing claims handlers to think critically to understand the value of each element. Claims handlers evaluate more information more efficiently, which enables them to more successfully negotiate and settle cases in less time and with better outcomes. Casentric's first pilot at a small auto insurance company in 4Q2012/1Q2013 tested CaseXpert™'s liability component. Results showed that users applied more information to cases that they evaluated, which resulted in 3X more settlements using comparative negligence, 3X more success in settling cases at their assessed value, and 5 percentage point loss reduction, or $4.5MM/year. Users gave positive feedback on CaseXpert™'s ease of use, its impact on their ability to understand their jobs better and learn, and resolve cases more successfully. Casentric engaged in a second paid pilot with a second P&C insurance company in 4Q2013/1Q2014 to test its liability module. Results showed that CaseXpert™'s liability module was projected to achieve, initially, $1MM in cost reductions, or 1% of their annual expense spend, in 2014. As of 1Q2014, Casentric has four paying customers, two of which are in pilot, and is building a customer pipeline, with a MRR of $9K and growing. Along with additional reporting capabilities to show how claims handlers individually perform relative to one another, Casentric is demonstrating that claims handlers use more evidence and arguments with CaseXpert™, resulting in significant reductions in amounts paid by companies for claims by third parties for losses related to medical bills and pain and suffering, in addition to the portion of the losses for which their customers are responsible. Casentric has been funded to date by its founders ($350K+), a $250K convertible note from JumpStart, Inc., a Cleveland-based nonprofit venture association, and a $100K nonrecourse note from a local county economic development fund.

Centerline Biomedical, Inc. was founded in November 2014 and is based on technology developed at the Cleveland Clinic. Centerline's mission is to develop advanced navigation systems that initially target interventional vascular procedures.

Checkpoint Surgical provides physicians with medical devices to locate, evaluate, and protect nerves and muscles in surgical procedures. The company's flagship product, the Checkpoint Stimulator/Locator is a single-use, hand-held stimulator with a broad range of stimulation parameters that are fully controllable by the surgeon with one hand and capable of eliciting a muscle contraction from stimulating the nerve directly or the tissue surrounding the nerve. The Checkpoint Surgical team continues to develop new and innovative first in class devices to help surgeons achieve better patient outcomes.