Ohio State alumnus Ratmir Timashev is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist best known as the co-founder of Veeam Software. Ground was broken Oct. 21 on the Timashev Technology Tower, a planned innovation and research facility at Ohio State University.
For decades, the coasts have dominated the story of American innovation, with Silicon Valley and New York as its epicenters.
But today, the Midwest is challenging the idea that geography determines the destiny for American tech.
The future belongs to places with the raw materials, talent and grit to become innovation powerhouses. Columbus is one such place, and this week it adds a new chapter to that story as Ohio State breaks ground on the Timashev Technology Tower.
I know this
story because I am part of it.
America needs what Columbus has
I came here from the Soviet Union as a graduate student, looking for a place where opportunity was abundant, talent was cultivated and ideas could turn into IPOs. Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t leave for the coasts.
I stayed because I saw in Columbus what I look for in any investment: a strong foundation, meaningful assets, and the capacity to grow far beyond where it is today.
Columbus has world-class universities, enviable affordability, a deep talent pool and a community that is collaborative and hardworking. Those strengths give Columbus the potential to define the future of American tech.
American entrepreneurship needs that kind of Midwestern reboot.
Venture capital may be near record highs, but new businesses are forming at a far slower rate than they once did.
According to startup-funding data from Carta, more than 70% of venture dollars raised on its platform in 2024 went to just four states: California, New York, Massachusetts and Texas. Ohio, home to roughly 3.5% of the nation’s population, received just 0.5%. Concentrating capital in a handful of places is throttling innovation everywhere else.
Columbus has the elements to change that. Our institutions supply a steady pipeline of skilled graduates across industries. Our affordability gives entrepreneurs an economic edge. And our collaborative culture lets new ideas find partners quickly.
Partnering with JobsOhio, we are building the tower in Ohio State’s Innovation District to move promising ideas out of the lab and classroom and into the real world, whether that means a new therapy, a new technology, a software platform or a startup company.
The Timashev Technology Tower will house Ohio State’s Center for Software Innovation, which I am also proud to have founded with OSU, where students and builders work alongside business partners while they are still enrolled, breaking down the silos that too often separate education from industry missing a key time to connect learning, innovation and career opportunities.
We are embedding expertise here in the heartland
The tower joins a growing cluster of innovators in the district. Its neighbors include Koloma, the clean-energy Ohio State startup with its research home in the district; Google, which announced last month it would be opening a first of its kind AI research space in the Energy Advancement and Innovation Center; and the Pelotonia Research Center, which houses more than 100 labs and up to 1,000 researchers in fields from biomedical engineering to data science working together to develop next-generation techniques and therapies that improve human health.
This concentration of researchers, founders, industry leaders, students and statewide networks creates the opportunity for unexpected connections, new partnerships and faster translation of ideas into technologies and companies. Proximity turns individual strengths into shared opportunities.
That is the flywheel I want to keep spinning.
It is why I founded OH.io, a first-of-its-kind effort to position Columbus as a global technology hub by attracting 100 of the best AI and tech startups to Columbus by 2030 and helping them go to market.
OH.io partners with founders who have strong products and paying customers but need help building the operations, sales and marketing that turn a good product into a great company. Many brilliant founders know how to build technology. Fewer have the time or experience to sell it. We take on that work and share the risk of scaling, so they can stay focused on their product.
Ohio Stateand OH.io share a goal: to embed expertise here in the heartland and make Columbus a place where tech founders find not only their footing, but their funding and a future home built for growth.
The tower anchors that vision in the larger Innovation District, creating a community where talent, research, industry and entrepreneurship come together and are helping to grow Columbus and Ohio’s economy while making an impact on people’s lives. Investing in these efforts is more than a way to give back to the city that gave me my start. It is a chance for Columbus to lead the next wave of American entrepreneurship. The talent and institutions are here. Now we’re building the infrastructure.
The story of American innovation is ongoing, and I’m betting on Columbus as a major player in the next chapter.
Ratmir Timashev is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist best known as the co-founder of Veeam Software. An alumnus of The Ohio State University and the architect behind OH.io, he has made a historic gift to Ohio State to establish the Center for Software Innovation through the Timashev Foundation.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: I found abundant opportunity in Columbus. New OSU tower will create more | Opinion
