Venture Impact Players: John Bruck of Knoxville is on 'a bit of a mission'

BY LARISA BRASS

SINCE COMING TO KNOXVILLE Knoxville from his hometown of Cincinnati nine years ago, John Bruck has been working to cultivate an entrepreneurial culture in the Scruffy City as vibrant as the one he came from.

Bruck moved here for love and now lives with his wildlife-biologist wife on their farm, with three goats, three donkeys and five dogs.

Beginning with a three-year stint as the University of Tennessee’s first entrepreneur-in-residence, Bruck has tracked eight different positions in multiple ventures, landing him most recently as co-founder of venture capital firm Market Square Ventures (MSV) and entrepreneurial co-working space 121 Tech Hub—both of which he formed alongside Brandon Bruce, an entrepreneur and fellow Knoxville transplant.

John Bruck

“I’m on a bit of a mission,” Bruck told VNC during an interview at 121 Tech Hub, which is located in the historic Knoxville warehouse district of known as the Old City.

Decades ago, Bruck established himself in Cincinnati as founder of a successful consulting and engineering company, BHE Environmental, a former INC. 500 honoree. He exited that business in 2013 via sale to an industry peer since acquired by WSP Global Inc. (TSX:WSP).

He told VNC that upon arriving Knoxville he found the city's start-up culture to be more of a work-in-progress than was Cincinnati, where he had been an active investor member of Queen City Angels, the organization that helped him realize how much he enjoyed the hands-on adventure of helping other entrepreneurs targeting mature markets.

Bruck explained that truly vibrant entrepreneurial communities, including Cincinnati, have four equally active business quadrants—entrepreneurs, investors, institutions and corporations—all, in effect, working together to seed and support innovation for market entry and business expansion.

After nearly a decade in Knoxville, Bruck said that in spite of top-notch research and commercialization efforts being carried out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and others in the region, it still seems that Knoxville’s long-running economic dependence on institutional employment has bred excessive wariness among many potential startup investors.

He added that wariness—not to be confused with diligence—leads too many East Tennessee entrepreneurs to relocate more mature markets, in order to secure the capital and other vital resources they need.

In that context, it's worth noting here that Bruck served several years as lead advisor to the University of Tennessee Research Park's SPARK Innovation Center.

The Spark program supports lab and prototype development for commercialization, and provides entrepreneurial mentorship and expertise.

However, Bruck said his Spark experience also opened his eyes to the need for greater momentum in enlisting corporate executives and others to help businesses grow beyond seed stage.

That same realization reinforced the co-founders' determination to launch Market Square Ventures and 121 Tech Hub, he added.

Brandon and Bruce discovered as they were laying the groundwork for their venture fund that Tennessee law, taken at face value, could be a problem.

An advisor who was assisting Bruck and Bruce in setting up what became the MSV fund pointed them to an obscure federal regulation from the 1930s, Rule 0780-04-03.05, that was meant to preclude establishment of angel funds across the nation.

Bruck then learned every other state in the Union except Tennessee had created policies that ensured freedom to create angel funds.

“We didn’t think it was the right thing” to proceed with a business model that might be deemed illegal, said Bruck.

Thus, instead of moving toward launch of an MSV fund they worked with officials of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TN ECD), the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, and Launch Tennessee to change the language.

The new regulation went into effect Dec. 25, 2023, the effort having delayed the launch of Market Square Ventures by 14 months.

MSV's first investment was made in March 2024. During last month's meeting of the Launch Tennessee board of directors, Bruck reported MSV investments then stood at 19 businesses in Tennessee and 1 in Indiana. MSV's updated Portfolio page.

Bruck also told LaunchTN directors that MSV seeks to connect with startups statewide and plans in 2026 to consider such options as standing-up a Fund II and-or related initiatives. Bruck's slides 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

The MSV fund has co-invested with funds managed by Launch Tennessee or by such angel groups such as Brickyard in Chattanooga, an effort that has thus far benefited six recipients in Knoxville, seven in Nashville, five in Chattanooga and one in Johnson City.

Bruck emphasized that MSV's range of investments has been enhanced by entrepreneurship and investment bubbling-up across the state, with support from private investors and from institutions including Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech.

Meanwhile, Bruck said he sees lots of room for growth in the Knoxville region.

The rationale takes us back to the quadrants idea: Market Square Ventures has been able to attract local investors, but people, “particularly business people, play their cards close to their vest,” Bruck said.

Thus, the next critical step in energizing Knoxville’s entrepreneurial community is generating greater participation by local industry.

Reinforcing that point, Bruck rattled-off the names of exemplary corporate players in Cincinnati—including Proctor & Gamble, The Kroger Company, General Electric Company—which he said rolled-out the welcome mat for start-ups to succeed or fail.

For East Tennessee, he re-emphasized, the next step in the process is convincing both the region's corporations and institutions to take risks and play the long-game with entrepreneurs.

Brandon Bruce

Toward that end, Bruck, 71, and Bruce, 47, are working to bring a group of local corporate executives into the same room to talk about what that would look like and start to chip away at the culture of caution.

He emphasized that simply getting the players to talk with one another is a big step in the right direction.

Bruck would not say which companies have thus far agreed to participate, acknowledging only that the effort has attracted some of Knoxville’s very largest private employers.

Bruck and Bruce continue modeling collaboration by maintaining 121 Tech Hub as their primary base of operation.

The hub's occupants have access to personal office space as well as common networking areas and conference rooms.

That and other features of the hub are designed to help create opportunities for entrepreneurs to rub shoulders with one another and benefit from the experience of those who have 'been there' before them, all of which helps cultivate the kind of environment Bruck aims to build.

“I want to work in a place where what I do makes a difference. . .We’re making a difference,” Bruck added. VNC

Larisa Brass's career has included a combined eight years as a staff reporter with the Knoxville News Sentinel and The Oak Ridger, as well as previous communications for Oak Ridge National Laboratory and others, plus freelance writing across decades. She, too, is a transplant, having relocated to Tennessee from Ohio with her parents as a 4-year-old.

.last edited 1127 CT 25 February 2026