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COhatch collaboration with FSB brings $500k in services to support next generation of social entrepreneurs

Winning team and faculty members at Venture Pitch competition

COhatch, a rapidly growing central Ohio-based company which develops innovative shared work and social spaces, continues to add resources for college students with its recent in-kind gift of $500,000 in professional services to Miami University’s Farmer School of Business.

COhatch presented the gift yesterday at the RedHawk Venture Pitch Competition in Taylor Auditorium, which included pitches from 24 student-founded companies. The winners of the competition, Pips (Abby Grone, Jamie Nguyen, Emma Shaffer, Jake Ransbottom, Natalie Brinkman, Nicholas Nocevski, Hannah Schweitzer, and Aleia Nagle) were the first to receive part of this donation in the form of free COhatch services, including access to all of the company’s locations throughout Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Tampa.

Scholarships for use of COhatch’s locations will continue to be awarded over the next three years to additional outstanding Miami University students and graduates pursuing entrepreneurship. The Farmer School of Business will also be able to utilize COhatch’s locations across the United States as meeting and event space for alumni and entrepreneur events, industry innovation meetings, faculty offsite meetings, educational events for the community and more.

“With this partnership, we’re furthering our mission of ‘strengthening communities, improving lives, and equipping people to be greater,’ by investing in the students, faculty and alumni of the Farmer School of Business,” said Matt Davis, co-founder and CEO of COhatch. “My wife and I are very proud alumni of Miami and are excited to be a small part of supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs so they can solve some of society's greatest problems.”

Investing in The Farmer School of Business’s John W. Altman Institute of Entrepreneurship can truly create change. The program has been ranked as one of the top ten public undergraduate entrepreneurship programs in the world for the 14th consecutive year. In the less than 30 years since the program was founded, graduates have founded nine unicorns, which are privately held startup companies valued over $1 billion.

“With the strong emphasis that we place on ‘learning by doing’ in our entrepreneurship curricular and co-curricular programming at Miami University, we’re constantly looking for new opportunities to connect student-founders with the resources they need to launch and scale their start-up companies,” said Tim R. Holcomb, chair, Department of Entrepreneurship, and director, John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship. “This partnership with COhatch gives students a vibrant environment to work in, access to additional resources post-graduation and the ability to experience what one of our very own graduates has built.”

Davis said he sees this as an opportunity to create greater connectivity between students, faculty, alumni and the community.

“As we expand to more markets, we’ll be able to increase and strengthen those connections to really make a difference,” Davis said. “We’re investing in the future of entrepreneurship.”