Eric Corl - Ohio Entrepreneur

Eric Corl has been recognized by the White House, United Nations, Small Business Administration, and Inc Magazine, among others. Did you also know, he’s based right here in Columbus, Ohio?

The 33 year old entrepreneur has made a name for himself helping get new startups off the ground and certainly hasn’t let any grass grow under his feet. Since launching his first company in 2004, Corl has helped thousands of entrepreneurs through education and companies he has built specifically to help them do the same. He was part of the founding team of Startups.co, co-founder of Fundable, and of the Inc 500 recognized company Idea Buyer.

He states, “Every venture I’ve been a part of has been built around helping other entrepreneurs and as I’ve had more wins and failures, I’ve taken the nuggets of wisdom and we’ve distilled them down to help entrepreneurs compress time, mitigate risk, and scale more successfully.”

Corl currently serves as the President & CEO of Dublin, OH based Idea Buyer, LLC. He founded the company while a Junior at Ohio State University as featured way back in this Columbus Dispatch article featuring him notes - Big Business.

contact them. The company has helped launch thousands of ventures ranging from baby products that sell through Macy’s, Buy Buy Baby, and Target to sporting goods products that sell through Cabela’s, Bass Pro, Sportsman’s Warehouse, and it doesn’t stop there.

The company’s development team has helped launch a multitude of high tech apps to the iOS and Android App Stores.

When asked about the technology bridge, Corl stated, “We got into high end app development through products we envisioned benefiting from a tech component. After solving several problems, and having success, it led us to more and more ventures in the space, and currently is a growing business for us”.

The company has grown substantially since it’s early days in Corl’s college apartment to an expansive office that includes a large warehouse dedicated to prototyping. It’s like walking into a willy wonka factory for new ideas.

Eric Corl is humble about the company and states that scaling the venture has been challenging at times. “When you scale your company, it becomes more and more difficult to be involved in every aspect. As we have had more success, we’ve actually reduced the number of ventures we get involved with, so we can dedicate more time to coaching the entrepreneurs we help. It has helped tremendously in seeing more performance from those entrepreneurs, and we have more control over filtering out people with unrealistic expectations or those that lack the grit to put the work in.”

The company has gone so far as to put up a disclaimer on their website warning people that there are substantial challenges when launching a new business, and the weary should not

It’s been an impressive overview of entrepreneurial tenacity right here in Columbus. As far as what the future holds, Eric Corl states, “We love what we do and we don’t see that changing. The diversity in both the startups we get involved with and the founders keeps everything exciting. As we continue building companies, we keep getting better.”