Ask a US-based VC where they look for the next big thing in which to invest, and you’d likely hear ‘Silicon Valley’, ‘Boston’, or ‘New York’; on the contrary, you’re unlikely to hear ‘the Midwest’. Yet that’s exactly where Ikove Venture Partners, which is based in The Ohio State University’s Electro Science Lab in Columbus, Ohio, focuses its efforts. Ikove – pronounced ‘ee-kove’ – was co-founded by Rodolfo Bellesi, Flavio Lobato, John D’Orazio, and Dr. Robert Lee.  Lobato and Bellesi are from a region of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon river, and in the indigenous language, ikove means ‘to...