Bounce stands on the foundation of Akron’s first wave of innovation and industry – the B.F. Goodrich Company, founded in 1870. Like many startups today, B.F. Goodrich was a young man with little capital and a big dream. He left New York to come to Akron to establish the first rubber company west of the Appalachian Mountains. However, he didn’t do it alone. Members of the Akron community helped him raise the capital he needed to get started.

The journey wasn’t easy; B.F. almost went bankrupt twice. Still, he kept at it and with the invention of the pneumatic tire – and, of course, cars – technology advanced, tires were in demand and the rest is history.

Eventually, of course, the rubber industry that B.F. Goodrich started would eventually dwindle to almost nothing by the late 1970s and early 1980s, resulting in thousands of lost jobs and a severe economic downturn for the city and region. It was during that time, that the Akron Global Business Accelerator, now known as Bounce, was founded in 1983. It originally housed manufacturing startups, and eventually became solely a technology incubator.  In 2015, it founded The Bit Factory, a software startup accelerator. The incubator program has been absorbed by Bounce and the Accelerator name is no longer used; however, The Bit Factory remains intact and serves as Bounce’s accelerator.