Rem Harris

Remsen "Rem" Harris is a Cleveland-based venture investor and operator with more than two decades of experience spanning operations, sales, and marketing across both large corporations and early-stage, venture-backed startups. He earned a B.A. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from John Carroll University. Before entering venture, he was a member of the executive team at Cleveland startup RDS, Inc., which had a successful exit to Thomson Reuters, and he later led strategic distribution partnerships at Cleveland enterprise-software company Hyland Software, where he managed relationships with national and Fortune 500 partners.

Harris joined JumpStart Inc. — Northeast Ohio's flagship nonprofit venture development organization — in 2006, rising over roughly 13 years from Vice President of Investments to Principal, Partner, and ultimately Senior Partner of Investing. In that role he oversaw JumpStart's deal-flow intake, due diligence, and investment closings, and managed the organization's Seed and Series A venture funds. During his tenure he led investments in more than 100 companies. His signature deal was structuring JumpStart's early seed financing of CoverMyMeds, which became Ohio's first tech "unicorn" when McKesson acquired it for $1.3 billion in 2017 — one of the state's most-cited startup success stories.

More recently, Harris co-founded and serves as Managing Partner of Nirvana Healthcare Ventures, a Cleveland-based, roughly $100 million venture fund launched in 2021 that backs high-growth, early-stage Midwest healthcare companies, leveraging relationships with regional health systems and university tech-transfer offices. In between, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Intelligent Mobile Support (IMS), an early-stage software company building tools for the in-home services market. He has also acted as a board member and startup advisor (roles noted at Freedom Meditech and Beagle Bioproducts) and is listed as a business advisor with Cre8tive Capital.

• Invests primarily at the seed / early stage, historically writing ~$250K JumpStart checks and syndicating pre-seed through Series A rounds ($250K–$3M+).
• Longtime focus on Ohio and Midwest technology startups — SaaS/enterprise software, healthcare IT, and B2B — with deep ties to the Northeast Ohio ecosystem.
• Emphasizes classic early-stage diligence areas he advises founders on: product-market fit, operating metrics, forecasting, growth strategy, and talent management.
• At Nirvana Healthcare Ventures, the mandate narrows to early-stage healthcare innovation in the Midwest, sourced through partnerships with regional health systems and academic tech-transfer departments.
• Track record signals a preference for capital-efficient companies that can scale from the Midwest — CoverMyMeds being the model outcome.