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LayerZero Co-Founders Honored with the Dively Entrepreneur Award

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LayerZero Co-Founders Honored with the Dively Entrepreneur Award

Recognizing Visionary Leadership in Mission-Critical Power

LayerZero Power Systems is proud to announce that its co-founders,Milind Bhanoo and Jim Galm, were honored with the Dively Entrepreneur Award by theHarvard Business School of Northeast Ohio. The award recognizes leaders whose innovation, integrity, and vision have made a lasting impact on the region’s business and technology community. The award ceremony was held at the Union Club in Downtown Cleveland, bringing together regional business, academic, and civic leaders. The evening included:
  • A cocktail reception for the local business and technology community.
  • A formal dinner and award presentation honoring outstanding entrepreneurs.
  • A fireside chat with Clay Rankin, Managing Director and Founder of North Coast Ventures.

About the Dively Entrepreneur Award

The Dively Entrepreneur Award is presented annually to an individual or company in Northeast Ohio that demonstrates exceptional entrepreneurial success. Honorees are evaluated based on:
  • A proven record of innovation in products or services.
  • Sustained financial performance and business growth.
  • Achievement of a meaningful position in the marketplace.
This year’s recognition highlights LayerZero’s continued commitment to building safe, transparent, and highly reliable power systems for mission-critical applications worldwide.

Honoring Entrepreneurial Leadership

Milind and Jim were recognized for their decades-long leadership and their role in building LayerZero into a global leader in mission-critical power reliability. What began as a bold idea has evolved into a company serving industries where uptime is essential. LayerZero’s success reflects:
  • Innovation in power reliability, setting new benchmarks for safety and performance.
  • Local job creation and workforce development across Northeast Ohio.
  • Global reach supported by strong community roots.
In his remarks, Milind described the honor as “completely unexpected,” while illustrating LayerZero’s mission through a simple but powerful example. “We prevent a blink-of-an-eye power outage from shutting down mission-critical processes,” Milind said. He explained how LayerZero’s Static Transfer Switch (STS)transfers power between two sources faster than the human eye can blink, ensuring continuity for data centers, financial institutions, and other critical environments. “The Static Transfer Switch does that without any moving parts,” Milind said. “What we did was make the most reliable and best Static Transfer Switch the world has ever seen.” Milind credited Jim for helping to make that vision a reality, calling him “an engineer’s engineer.”

A Cleveland Success Story

Founded in 2001 by Case Western Reserve University alumni Milind Bhanoo and Jim Galm, LayerZero Power Systems began with a single prototype built in a garage and powered by a washer-and-dryer outlet. “We were either going to be successful or we were going to be successful,” Jim said, describing how the company was initially self-funded through personal savings and determination. Today, LayerZero employs more than 400 people across its Aurora and Streetsboro, Ohio, facilities and serves customers around the world. LayerZero’s product portfolio includes:
  • Static Transfer Switches (STS)
  • Power Distribution Units (PDUs)
  • Remote Power Panels (RPPs)

A Year of Continued Growth

In 2025, LayerZero entered a new chapter through a strategic partnership with Advent International, accelerating growth and expanding manufacturing and engineering capacity across Northeast Ohio. Recent milestones include:
  • A 120,000-square-foot expansion of the Philipp Parkway facility in Streetsboro.
  • The creation of more than 500 new full-time jobs.
  • Investment in new product lines to support AI-ready, mission-critical power infrastructure.

Looking Ahead

With continued investment, a growing workforce, and a strong foundation in Northeast Ohio, LayerZero Power Systems is positioned for sustained global growth. As Milind and Jim accepted the Dively Entrepreneur Award, they did so with gratitude for their team, partners, and community. "We think of ourselves as undeserving, but obviously, you folks don’t, so we’ll run with it," Milind joked. The award serves as a reminder of what defines LayerZero: visionary leadership, technical excellence, and a mission to deliver power reliability to the industries that power the future.
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