Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis Business Journal gathered leaders in the state's technology industry for a Power Breakfast panel discussion March 13.
Panel members included Brad Bostic, president and CEO, hc1.com; Aman Brar, president, Apparatus; Elizabeth Hagerman, vice president, Rose-Hulman Ventures; Tim Kopp, advisor and venture partner, Hyde Park Venture Partners; Sally Reasoner, Xtern Talent Program lead, TechPoint; and Peter Servaas, president, Doublemap Inc.
The discussion was led by IBJ reporter Jared Council.
The following is an unedited transcript of the discussion.
COUNCIL: So to kick things off here I want
to start with Tim. Obviously big news earlier this
week about Hyde Park setting up an office here on
Monument Circle this summer. What will it mean for
Indy, Tim?
KOPP: Thanks, Jared. It means continued
acceleration and continued innovation. What is
really interesting, so Hyde Park is a seed stage,
series A venture capital firm and they had an
opportunity to really open up an office anywhere and
when they looked across the country they viewed
Indianapolis as kind of a metaphorical and literal
hub of what's happening throughout the tech ecosystem
in the midwest, so what you can expect from us is to
anchor down, to put down roots here to really help
with some of the funding gaps that we see, and to
continue to support the early stage entrepreneurial
system as much as we can with both financial capital
and human capital.
COUNCIL: Awesome. And, Peter, I want to go
to you. You're a young entrepreneur in the city
that's really been garnering national tech attention
lately. What do you like about Indy and where can it
improve?
SERVAAS: Yes, so in terms of areas where we
?
excel, I think there's core competency, so everyone's
seen the success in life sciences, technology and
logistics, also the universities, as long as we tap
into those phenomenal universities, which I have to
give a shout-out to Indiana University, my alma
mater, and Brad Wheeler, who's here, is the CIO of
the school, but along with Rose-Hulman, Notre Dame,
there's an engineering school in Lafayette that's
pretty strong as well, and I think if the companies
and organizations can tap into these students when
they're still in college and help utilize them
through TechPoint or these other organizations into
full-time employees, that's a competitive advantage
that few other states have. In terms of areas where
we can improve, fundraising is probably the largest
one I think that people in the tech community would
see a void that needs to be filled, so groups of
investors that can kind of ride out through all
series of investment. I think the announcement from
Hyde Park is phenomenal and that's the kind of steps
we need to see. And then the last one would be
office space, so seeing things like 1871 out of
Chicago and seeing some of these shared work spaces
where when we started our business three years ago
out of my grandparents' house, it's not a place you
?
can take clients, so finding places where you can get
groups together, let them bounce ideas off each
other, learn from each other, those are some of the
areas I think we can continue to improve on in
Indianapolis.
COUNCIL: Now to you, Brad, you've been an
entrepreneur here for quite some time, what would you
say have been some of the biggest differences between
Indy's tech scene today versus five years ago, tell
us what's been going on.
BOSTIC: It's interesting to reflect. Aman's
making a lot of notes on my comments, I can tell,
here. The 20 years that you cited, I think that's,
by my calculation, about 140 web years, so we've been
at it for quite awhile. I think clearly five years
ago we were, in general, in a bit of an economic
slump, so that's an obvious observation, and I think
as we've seen, though, the development of some very
successful companies, including ExactTarget that
we've all watched, I think, and we've been extremely
excited to see that kind of successful outcome, and
Aprimo is another great example that had a very
high-profile outcome that created a lot of value, I
think seeing that kind of success really helps and
has helped in the past five years evolve the thinking
?
and it gets more people in the mindset of living in
this world of what's possible versus living in a
world of what's not possible, which is a huge
difference in terms of mindset, and I think that one
of the challenges when you come from a midwestern
background can be a bit of an aversion to that more
risk-taking living in a world of what's possible, and
when you see big successes that result in things like
building a 2.7 billion dollar company down the road
with a lot of people that you know, that is, I think,
a great way to accelerate additional opportunities,
and then the other piece is when you see that success
and you have people coming out of successes like
that, it's sort of like the four-minute mile where
until somebody ran it nobody thought you could do it
and then all of a sudden it happens and lots of
people start following that and achieving that level
of success, so to me I think the biggest difference
over the past five years is that progression toward
really seeing that you can do it here and that's
really generating a lot of additional activity and I
think we'll see more success as a result.
COUNCIL: Just a quick follow-up to that, and
anybody can jump in on this, you know, we've also had
the ExactTarget — or excuse me, Salesforce's
?
acquisition of ExactTarget in the past few years, and
I'm curious to know what are some of the ripples that
we're still seeing from that?
REASONER: I'll jump in. Just to provide a
little bit of context to what Brad was saying, in the
past six years or so we've seen 12 tech acquisitions
and IPOs totaling 4.7 billion dollars in market value
infused right here in central Indiana, and I think
ExactTarget and Salesforce is a huge part of it, but
like Brad had mentioned, Teradata/Aprimo, those as
well, we're seeing lots of innovation, and so when
I'm on campus talking to students I love to share
that stat because when I can say "We have 4.7 billion
dollars flowing through our tech community," it means
that there's innovation and students' eyes light up
and it's true, I mean I think Tim could probably talk
a little bit more, but Geofeedia is one that came
right out of ExactTarget, R.J. Talyor, they're going
to be an Xtern host company next year, they're hiring
a lot of young talent and they're growing fast. So,
Tim, do you want to elaborate?
KOPP: Yeah. I think I think the ripple
effects are going to be felt for a long time. I
think we're just starting to feel them and I think
its going to reverberate for a long, long time. If
?
you look at what's happened in other cities when
there's been one kind of company, you know, an Amazon
in Seattle or a Microsoft or other cities that have a
big exit, I think it creates a couple different
things. No. 1 is it legitimizes that as a place that
other venture capitalists want to come into and
provide money and know that they can get a return.
So I think the secret is out, the hidden secret is
out on Indianapolis. I think, you know, the coastal
venture capitalists know they can come here and find
outstanding companies. The second ripple that I
think you'll really see is around talent. I've been
in three different cities this week, traveled all
over the country. Indianapolis has the best,
certainly, kind of B2B software tech ecosystem that
I've seen. There's incredible talent and these
larger companies have drawn in that talent. Some
people want to be part of the later stage opportunity
and some people want to be a part of the earlier
stage opportunity and now they have a chance to kind
of mesh. There was a question 10 years ago "If I
come to work for this company, well, what does my
career progression look like?" Now I think you can
point to dozens of different examples where you can
go and the ecosystem is so much more vibrant, so
?
there's been a lot of people who were at ExactTarget,
grew with the company, now know what's possible when
you see them at companies like hc1, Geofeedia,
TinderBox, and now you're seeing those companies
continue to accelerate, which I think is just a great
win for the city. So I think it helps with capital,
it helps with people, and then just really helps
legitimize our city really on a national scale.
BOSTIC: It's funny, Tim, I got a call
yesterday from a general partner at an east coast-
based venture fund that just closed a billion dollar
fund and so they're looking to invest 20 to 30
million in companies and he was literally apologetic
for not having investments in Indianapolis after he
had kind of tuned in, I think it was probably one of
his analysts who told him everything that's going on.
It was palpable how he was almost like "How did we
miss all of this?" So I think it puts a fine point
to what you're saying.
COUNCIL: Wow! Interesting. And speaking of
B2B, Tim, you brought this up, and, Aman, I want to
direct this question to you. Indy is known for its
B2B start-ups, but are we seeing some traction in B2C
companies or is Indy, you know, trying to diversify
or are we really embracing our B2B-ness?
?
BRAR: I suppose we're embracing it, but I
think it's up to all the individual founders out
there not to put lids on themselves, right, so I
certainly think we've got a great anchor core in the
B2B space and we ought to leverage that as much as we
possibly can, but as an individual entrepreneur, if
somebody's out there, I don't think they should limit
their thinking, right, at the end of the day. Now,
there are unique challenges in B2C space and whether
you're trying to actually get paid or whether you're
going to try to drive an advertising-revenue model,
but businesses are great payers, right, so I think we
should continue to leverage opportunities in the B2B
space, but I'd just encourage the individual
entrepreneur, the kid out of college, not to limit
their thinking ultimately regardless of what the
inherent challenges might be in any of the space.
COUNCIL: And, Sally, we can't talk about
tech without talking about talent and tech jobs are
some of the fastest growing in the nation. What are
we seeing here?
REASONER: Yeah, so tech jobs nationally are
growing at a rate two times faster than the job
growth and between now and the year 2020 they
estimate that across the US economy there will be 1.4
?
million net new computer related jobs and this is a
national estimate, and in that same time span they
estimate that 400,000 students will have graduated,
so that's a million person talent gap and we're
seeing even faster growth rates here in Indiana. So
a year ago right now at the IBJ Tech Power Breakfast
TechPoint released our technology workforce report
where we found that tech jobs and computer-related
jobs here in Indiana were growing at a rate six times
faster than across all occupations, so that's huge,
and we're fortunate enough that we have universities
like Rose-Hulman, we have this home-grown talent
pipeline, it's just getting over the brand perception
gap and the marketing gap to draw students here and
to get that talent here, so, yes, we are seeing
incredible growth in talent attraction. It's
becoming increasingly important, especially because
we, because of our talent pipelines like Purdue and
Rose-Hulman, students are being recruited away and we
need to enlighten them or open their eyes to the
opportunities that exist here in Indiana because once
we sell those opportunities they're in and once we
can show them the opportunities they love it. I have
one more stat and then I'll open it up because I
think there are probably a lot of panelists who have
?
thoughts on this. But just to prove that marketing-
perception gap that exists with students, so in the
Xtern program last year we had 50 students working
across 12 tech companies. At the beginning of the
summer, 67 percent of the students reported that they
were not considering careers in Indianapolis, that it
was a stepping stone to careers elsewhere. By the
end of the summer, through some placemaking, through
introducing them to the tech community, through their
work experience with their host company, 91 percent
of the students reported highly considering
Indianapolis for their careers. So it's having that
opportunity to share that message with them, and
we're humble people, we're in the midwest, that's
part of our Indiana-ness, but we need to show off
what we have because there's a lot of incredible
things happening here.
HAGERMAN: I can maybe piggyback on that a
bit from the educational perspective. So just kind
of validating the fact that tech jobs are in high
demand and this is a hot market, the average student
who graduated from Rose-Hulman last year had 5.6 job
offers upon graduation and so the competition is
real. That does mean that they will need to be
convinced in some cases about which opportunity might
?
be best for them, so it's great that they have all of
these opportunities, they can consider all of these
things, but it might demand great programs like this
that really feature the benefits of a community or
the benefits of a certain ecosystem.
COUNCIL: Awesome. This next question I want
to kick it to Brad first but anybody can jump in on
it. It's almost impossible to predict the next
Indiana IPO or exit even via acquisition, but there
are some top candidates. Who should we be keeping
watch on?
BOSTIC: Well, this guy right here, he's got
size 17 shoes. I think to get to an IPO really
requires a certain level of predictability in a
business and a certain level of scale, and so I think
those are the two biggest questions, and then super-
fast growth when you're in the technology world
especially helps, and I don't think there are more
than a few companies that are to that point in terms
of being able to prepare for an IPO. I also think
that a lot of times people don't fully appreciate
what it really means to have an IPO, what that's all
about, and it's really generally, although there's
some liquidity there for owners, it's also really
about capitalizing and fueling that rocket for more
?
growth and more expansion, and I think the reality is
there is so much capital that's on the sidelines
today looking for great business opportunities with
high growth in private equity firms and other sorts
of financing vehicles that my suspicion is that we'll
see before IPOs a way of companies that are
partnering with larger private equity firms that are
able to bring 70, 100 and more million into the
business to help fuel that growth, and we saw that
with ExactTarget where the climate wasn't perfect to
go public but they basically went public without
going public by taking on this private equity
partner. Who's going to do that next is tough to
say. I think it's probably a couple years out before
we see another one, but, I don't know, Tim, you might
have a better perspective on companies that might be
getting to the IPO stage.
KOPP: Yeah, I mean I think the literal
question around IPOs, you've got to move through
stages, you know, an A round of capital, a C round,
an A round, a B round. You don't see many who have
raised kind of the really large chunks of money where
their investors are going to demand liquidity, so I
don't know that we're going to see an IPO in and of
itself in the next couple of years, but I also don't
?
know that the IPO is kind of the end-all-be-all or
the exact outcome, to Brad's point, that many people
want. I think you're going to see more mergers and
acquisitions. You see a lot of companies with really
big balance sheets and lean growth and they're going
to be interested in strategic combinations and those
kind of mergers. I think when you look at, to Brad's
point, what are the attributes of a company that you
look for that's going public, you look for large
addressable markets, you look for steady predictable
revenue growth, and you look for really high growth
rate or big businesses, and what's really great as I
look across the ecosystem now, if I look forward ten
years, I could probably list ten companies that I
think have that possibility.
COUNCIL: Like whom?
KOPP: TinderBox I think is a phenomenal
company that's doing really great, great market,
great leaders, really has a chance to do phenomenal
things. Geofeedia, another one on the Circle. You
don't see many companies growing 8 or 900 percent a
year, so growing incredibly quick, really good
management team, locking up some of the best logos in
the space, really adding location to marketing. I
think kind of what Brad is doing at hc1 is very
?
interesting in terms of health care IT is going to be
a phenomenal market. So that's just a handful. I
mean when you mention a few, I risk leaving out
others, but that's just a small sampling of those
that I think have terrific potential.
COUNCIL: Peter, do you got any thoughts?
SERVAAS: I think similar to the points
already made, you can follow these investment rounds,
so as you saw with Angie's List, ExactTarget, you saw
large investment rounds come in, those investors are
looking for a return in something like a three to
five-year timeline. Additionally I think you can
look at top-line revenue growth, so if a company is
having incredible revenue growth, whether it's an
acquisition or an IPO, that's another leading
indicator that there might be a change in the near
future.
COUNCIL: Gotcha. Now, Elizabeth, what kind
of skills are we seeing in high demand?
HAGERMAN: That's a great question. So just
as a reminder, our business model is that we act as
an engineering consulting firm for all types of
clients, large corporate clients, small start-ups,
and some of the trends that we've seen over time is
that it's specifically more in the IT space, of
?
course the development you see at the desktop base
and then move to web base and then now we have lots
and lots of app development going on for a wide range
of clients. The other thing that goes with that is
that we see our projects increasingly have a software
component, so there's kind of a joke around Rose-
Hulman Ventures that every project is a software
project at some level and what that speaks to is that
there's this increasing demand that no matter what
business you're in your thing needs to be connected
to everything else, so sort of along the internet of
things idea. I think this group is probably familiar
with the company Ecepticle (spelling?) They've been
a client of ours. So that's a "smart" trashcan that
tells the trashman when it's time to come empty it
and knows when to compact itself and all those
things, so that's an example. We have even some
agricultural clients who they make planting equipment
but it's very important for the planting equipment to
talk to the farmer to let him know how the seeds are
being distributed, how the growth patterns of the
plants are working, and sending all of this
information back to both the designers of the
equipment and the farmers in real-time so they can
increase their yields, improve their business. We
?
have others, they're kind of in the utilities
business similar to Ecepticle, but looking at
different ways to monitor sort of every-day systems
in a way that they can alert people in real-time, so
this idea of having a connectivity component to all
types of projects is a huge trend we're seeing now.
Our software department is consistently supplementing
the electrical engineers, the mechanical engineers on
all of these different types of projects we see. So
you asked about skillsets. There are certainly
technical skillsets associated with all of those
which people are picking up along the project route,
but what goes along with that is the ability for the
people to be able to connect with each other and
realize how all of these skillsets start to
intertwine from the technical and the personal
perspective. There is no project in our building
anymore that sits in one place, everything must work
together.
COUNCIL: Aman, do you have anything to add
to that?
BRAR: I think it was well spoken. I suppose
I would add, you know, I think there's a trend at
universities that I believe needs to kind of head the
other direction, which is, and certainly probably not
?
at Rose-Hulman, but we're seeing kids get into like
technology degree programs but not really focusing on
what I call the rigor that's required to kind of keep
up over time, so a lot of avoidance of things like
calculus and mathematics and other pieces, and the
technologies keep changing, right, but if you have a
fundamental mastery of analytical skill and those
capabilities, you can keep up, and I think that we
really need to start encouraging kids to be more
prepared coming out of college by digging into rigor
versus just trying to optimize for the A plus in
every GPA segment and it's a real challenge that
we're seeing in the interview process where people
are coming in with an informatics degree but they
really have not done anything with rigor from an
analytical perspective, and just being in the
technology space is not enough, right, we're looking
to get that analytical capability and that rigor to
be expressed so we have proof that we keep up with
the technical shifts over time.
HAGERMAN: I think that's a great point, and
I think many educational institutions are recognizing
that. At Rose-Hulman, I can speak for sure, that
this experiential component is one of the keys to
starting to answer some of those needs. When you're
?
working for a client who is really trying to achieve
something, of course you must achieve a deliverable,
you must achieve results and you won't be able to do
that without that technical rigor, so I think more
and more programs and especially that's a huge
conversation at Rose-Hulman and, of course, that's
what Rose-Hulman Ventures was built on was the idea
that students must engage in their market space and
in that environment that they will be in when
graduation comes around, so early on in those careers
gaining those skillsets, and that gets back, too, to
the issue of there are certain skills that are needed
at this moment but the larger skill of life-long
learning and figuring out how to work a problem even
if you don't know everything at the outset is
something that comes with these types of projects.
COUNCIL: Gotcha. Now back to venture
capital for a second here, and, Tim, you're the de
facto VC guru on this panel today, I want you to
describe for our audience here the state of
fundraising in Indianapolis. I mean it's never easy,
but at what stages here is it more challenging than
others, talk about that.
KOPP: Yeah, I guess here's how I think about
it, I think it's changed a lot over the last five
?
years and kind of what I'm seeing is a barbell or a
dumbbell. So because of Shark Tank and Kickstarter
it seems like it's so in vogue to be kind of an angel
investor right now that there is what I'm seeing a
huge burst of capital that's coming into early stage
opportunities, kind of pre-revenue opportunities,
something that's just coming off the ground, there
can always be more capital but I'm seeing plenty of
capital right there. I'm also seeing plenty of
capital at the very late stage when a company's been
fully de-risked and growing very quickly and people
are trying to pile in before the IPO, and if you
think about it that's when we've seen the coastal
investors really come in. What I think has been
missing is in that middle and I think that's what we
really need to accelerate and compress so once
somebody gets that seed round and they've got minimum
viable product and they're starting to see great
product market fit, they're adding a sales rep or
two, they're starting to see momentum, how do you
really invest all in and not require an entrepreneur
to go around and tin-cup and try to get a small
amount of funding from three or four people but to
really compress that funding cycle quickly, write one
large check and let the CEO and the management team
?
get back to building their business and doing so very
quickly. So I think it's right after the seed round
and kind of in the C plus, A, right in that middle,
and that's actually where our companies are in the
Indianapolis ecosystem, which is why, honestly, I in
part made this move. I see a great opportunity to
partner with other great VC firms, like Allos and
Origin and other great midwestern VCs, and combine
and collaborate together, write bigger checks, and
come in and help really unleash the full potential of
the entrepreneurial ecosystem, so the way I see this
is really this kind of barbell or dumbbell that needs
to be evened out in the middle.
COUNCIL: Peter, what's been your experience?
SERVAAS: We actually did not raise any
formal capital in our three or four years. We did go
through a couple processes just to evaluate the
option. We've been fortunate just in terms of how
our clients were into our funding to stay boot-
strapped. We also have a smaller market, so maybe
not the need there. But I think in the history it's
been a positive thing because we've had businesses
that build themselves on conservative fundamentals,
but as we look going forward to stay competitive you
have to have this kind of financing and funding that
?
Tim's mentioned, so I think it's been really positive
historically. I think it's great that it's in our
roots to build these conservative businesses, but as
we want to see competitive business on a national
level we need to see that shift and that movement.
COUNCIL: Now, Brad, venture capitalists have
poured an average of 123 million a year into Indiana
companies, this is according to a recent study, but
between 2007 and 2012, defined in part by huge rounds
by ExactTarget and Angie's List before their IPOs,
but over the past two years we haven't seen more than
50 million and I'm curious to know has Indiana lost
its mojo or is this just part of a natural cycle of
highs and lows?
BOSTIC: We talked about this a little bit
and I'm not sure where all of that data — I know it
came from a study that one of the big consulting
firms did, but I think there's actually probably more
funding that comes in through angel and other types
of investors in Indiana that maybe doesn't get
reflected in those numbers, that could be part of it,
but I think probably the more macroeconomic challenge
is definitely around attracting a higher number of
investors, institutional investors to Indiana and
getting more of those people to have Indiana on their
?
radar as a real hub for innovation and building great
companies. So I think that there is some truth to
those numbers in that we aren't — the amount of
capital is not matching the amount of talent and the
amount of opportunity, and Tim's move is certainly
one of the examples that is a positive towards fixing
that challenge, and I think also Sally mentioned
earlier this idea of kind of this humility and this
humble nature that we have here. If you look at
companies on the coasts, especially the west coast,
they are some of the best promoters that create this
kind of perception that almost becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy in the deals that really work out
and the ones that don't they don't talk about so
much, and I think we need to do a better job and I
think IBJ and TechPoint and others are starting to
step up to the plate to say "How do we create this
megaphone here?" because I think actually probably
the biggest gap is a perception gap among the people
who will come in and invest those larger dollars and
I think that perception relates to do you have enough
talent there, can you hire enough people to build a
really big company, so it helps us in time to be able
to say "Hey, these ExactTarget folks right down the
street hired 2000 people here and built a 2.7 billion
?
dollar business, so there's not a problem with not
having the talent to grow big business," so I think
we need to solve that perceptual gap because I think
you've got plenty of talent here, you've got plenty
of great ideas, you've got lots of great business
stories, and I think as the numbers in those
businesses start aligning with how good their stories
are and all these other datapoints, if you combine
that with having the megaphone and the perception I
think you will see a meaningful increase in capital
coming in.
COUNCIL: So I want to shift gears here a
little bit. Sally, what's been going on in the tech
community from a legislative standpoint, what are you
guys keeping your eyes on?
REASONER: Sure. So our legislative agenda
through TechPoint and on behalf of the tech community
has really focused on three main areas, talent,
capital and digital infrastructure, so I'll go just
briefly into each one of those. First is placemaking
and the talent aspect, how do we keep talent here,
how do we grow talent here and that's a lot in
placemaking, so House Bill 1403 and regional city
funds, so data has shown that talent clustered in
cities and they want the amenities of a city and
?
Indianapolis has those but how do we support other
cities around the state to have those amenities that
tech talent looks for when they're seeking job
opportunities, so that's the placemaking aspect.
Second is capital, how do we flow and drive capital
in our direction and we've kept an eye on the venture
capital investment tax credit in order to get that
capital coming to Indiana as we've been talking
about, and then third is building the digital
infrastructure and so streamlining the process and
the approvals to build fiber and wireless broadband,
so those are the three main aspects, placemaking,
directing investment our way and then building that
digital infrastructure.
COUNCIL: Gotcha. And to you, Elizabeth,
from a higher ed standpoint what can universities do
to better nuture entrepreneurship on campuses?
HAGERMAN: Yeah, that's a great question.
That's a hot topic I think across many universities
right now and especially for scientists,
mathematicians and engineers, where Rose-Hulman
focuses, we've also really put a lot of priority in
that space. So some of the things we're focusing on
take a few different tracks. One of the things that
is a big idea at Rose-Hulman right now is that the
?
idea of entrepreneurship is really a mindset, so even
if you aren't out to start your own business you can
still enter the world with this entrepreneurial
mindset that's focused on seeing opportunity,
creating value in your environment and taking risks
to support those opportunities that you might see.
So through lots of efforts, we recently had a grant
through the KEEN Network and then also another grant
through the Lilly Endowment that kind of support
these efforts on campus as our startup initiatives to
support this entrepreneurial mindset, so we have that
going on, and I think it might be especially
important for these kind of engineering,
mathematician, scientist mindsets. I heard a
presentation recently of a professor who had art
students, engineering students, and business students
all working together on projects and when it came
time for feedback on these projects each of those
types of students responded very differently, so the
business students, when they received maybe a piece
of negative feedback, their reaction was to tell the
person that they were wrong, "No, I'm right and
you're wrong and here's why." The engineer would
shut down when they received the negative feedback
and just "Oh, I missed it, darn," you know, and it's
?
not unreasonable to think that because as a scientist
or an engineer you're kind of trained that there's a
right and wrong answer all the way through school but
then when you're out in the real world that's not the
case at all, you have to trial these things, you have
to get creative, you have to test hypotheses, and
science isn't so black and white in the real world,
and so that's another theme of training this
entrepreneurial mindset, that scientists really can
get creative, they can approach opportunities with a
more aggressive mindset and this ability to take
risks in a way that might not be engrained in them
through their education.
REASONER: And to jump in on that, I think
something that universities, Purdue especially in the
state right now but I think it's growing on other
campuses, I know Ball State and University of Notre
Dame have participated in the statewide Hackathon,
but Hackathons are this in action. I don't know if
anyone in the crowd has been to a college Hackathon,
but look up BoilerMake and mark it on your calendar
because it's incredible. I think they had a thousand
students in a gym at Purdue University and they code
for 36 hours straight, many of them don't sleep, and
it's the opportunity for them to try out tech
?
innovation and if they fail it's okay, and it's that
perfect environment where they can jump in and learn
anywhere from a first-year student to a senior who's
graduating. So I think that movement at least in the
computer science base towards Hackathons and making
them really cool and making them big events that
students want to go to nationally, so at BoilerMake
they bus in students from across the nation to
participate in the Hackathon, big prizes, big
opportunity to harness their brilliant minds and then
eventually see what they can build in 36 hours and
eventually build a company out of it and I think
we're starting to see that amongst the computer
science engineers on campus.
COUNCIL: So speaking of hacking, I mean what
opportunities exist here for people who are, you
know, at the beginning stages of it or people who may
have a little bit of experience with coding, I mean
tell us how we can get into it.
REASONER: Perfect. Yeah, so there's a ton
on college campuses, these are ripe opportunity for
college students and that's something that the State
of Indiana learned from, they saw how popular they
were in clusters of technology students on campus and
they built the Hack Indiana Series, the Indiana
?
Chamber, TechPoint, the State of Indiana, AT&T, are
all involved in that effort and there is the
IndyCivicHack coming up June 6th, so if you've
dabbled in coding or want to learn how to program,
there's no better opportunity to learn than at a
Hackathon. Actually, this past winter, I have to
plug it, it's just such a great story, but the Hack
Indiana versus Texas Challenge wrapped up a couple of
weeks ago and the winner of that challenge is an AT&T
employee, had been a telephone repairman, John
Schevola, and he won the Hackathon with a year of
programming experience from WGU, so he had been
learning online and this was his first real dive into
technology and he won $4000 and perhaps a contract
with the State, so that opportunity exists here and
that movement is growing here in the state of
Indiana, so check out the Hack Indiana Series, you
can find it on the TechPoint website, but the next
event will be the IndyCivicHack, that's where the
City of Indianapolis will open up a lot of public
data and allow individuals to use that data to
architect solutions and there's no better way to
learn than a Hackathon.
COUNCIL: Awesome.
SERVAAS: And, Jared, I was going to add to
?
that, the Eleven Fifty program up at Scott Jones'
house, I just saw a couple news articles on that, it
really looks like a phenomenal program for those who
have passed their college graduation or maybe didn't
go to college and are looking to get into a technical
skill-set and I think they focus primarily on apps,
but it's a great foundation for you then to go get
your first job.
REASONER: And there's another program coming
to Indianapolis similar to Eleven Fifty, The Iron
Yard, and that's one to keep an eye out for. So
we're making it in this state very easy to learn how
to program and to be part of the growing tech
community here.
COUNCIL: Awesome. Aman, what are some of
the tech trends that people should be keeping their
eyes on this year? I mean we're hearing about the
internet of things, we're hearing about the clouds
that keep forming and subscriptions are even hot
outside of tech. I mean you guys have seen what Crew
Carwash is doing. Enlighten us.
BRAR: Yeah, I'll try. I think that we hear
a lot about — There's lots of categories there,
right, IT and data and cloud computing. I think the
one that's getting a lot of buzz right now is this
?
whole notion of wearables, and I suppose I'd just
recommend to the audience that we don't underestimate
the impact that wearables are going to have in the
coming years and if we broaden our thinking about the
wearable space, I think you'll see it in action
today. At the advent of the iPod, when everybody's
wearing white earbuds, if you said "Hey, five years
from now people are going to be walking around in the
streets with these giant Beats headphones wrapped
around their heads, everybody in the room would've
said "You're completely out of your mind, there's no
way that's going to happen," and then Dr. Dre went
and proved everybody wrong. So wearables are
happening, and we are not the ones that actually get
to decide what's going to be cool and in vogue and
what's going to work, and I would've absolutely lost
$100 if you told me that we'd be walking around with
Beats headphones on, right, so I think if we expand
our thinking and really push ourselves to think about
this kind of confluence of fashion and design and
wearables, what that really means, right, whether
it's a blood sugar sensor on our contact or whether
it's giant, massive headphones that people like to
wear now, I think there's a coming storm on the
horizon with regard to the impact that's going to
?
have on all of us and it all ties together, right,
it's essentially going to be powered by the internet
of things, it's going to be leveraging cloud
computing. What's amazing about this time right now,
Brad and I were talking about this last week, is that
if you want to you can open up your laptop and access
IBM Watson and start solving some of the world's
biggest problems from your couch, right, and it's
such an amazing time that we live in right now, and
cloud computing technology, what it does is we're
kind of on the new horizon of where that's taking
place. If you look around this room, that chair will
be able to calculate your weight and you'll wake up
in the morning and you'll look in your mirror and
it's going to analyze your pupils to decide what your
blood pressure is and all of these things are
happening like right now and so there's going to be
an explosion and we all need to prepare ourselves for
I think what it's going to look like, but I would
start with don't use the past to predict the future,
right, because none of us would've gotten the Beats
headphones, right?
REASONER: Just a quick shout-out. I can see
my dad's eyes glazing over, pay attention to this
because it's real and it's going to be happening
?
within your lifetime.
COUNCIL: So, Tim, I want to quickly touch on
marketing and technology. You know, Indy is known
for its marketing and tech, specifically the growing
overlap between, you know, marketing and technology
at a variety of companies, you know, some CIOs are
dabbling in marketing and then you have some CMOs who
are making tech decisions. You know, what's
happening there and how should CEOs respond?
KOPP: Yeah, I think this is a big point and
a fun point, and I feel somewhat qualified to speak
on the experience because I started off my career in
IT, actually. It turns out I'm the world's worst
Lotus Notes programmer you will ever find, so I
quickly made the shift into marketing, but I think
kind of what's happened is if you think about the
title "CIO," it's chief information officer. Now, if
you think about what is the charter of a CMO today,
the charter of a CMO is to leverage data to better
chip-connect with their customers, they have many
other things they're responsible for, so then that
overlap becomes very palpable, I mean a CIO is
responsible for pulling together that data and
architecture and the CMO figuring out how to leverage
it, so if you look at objective industry stats,
?
somebody like Gardner, within the next two and a half
years CMOs will be spending more on the IT budget
than the CIOs will. Now, does that mean that the CIO
will become irrelevant? No, because if you look at
everything that's happening around data and
infrastructure and security and hacking and all the
issues that are happening there, I think there's
going to be a huge number of things that are
happening, but the CMO, if you don't understand how
to use technology-enabled marketing, you should not
be a CMO, there's no point for your existence, plain
and simple, so it pulls that overlap together kind of
in a very real way, so what you see, it's different
by organization, but I'm seeing much more overlap
between the two and I'm seeing the CMO play the role
in large part that a CIO used to, which is driving
the data and connectivity strategy for the company
and how they connect with their customers.
COUNCIL: Gotcha.
BOSTIC: In health care we see another kind
of CMO that relates to this conversation, which is
the chief medical officer, and so if you think about
where health care's been where historically I use the
example of you can order a teddy bear on Amazon.com
and they treat it like it's life or death if they
?
deliver it to you on time but you go through a health
care experience where it's life or death and you're
treated like a number and the reason for that is
there isn't this sort of personalization that needs
to exist and if you look at how that relates to
marketing automation and when you think about more of
this convergence of information and how you target
and tailor an experience for somebody, it doesn't
just relate to shopping cart abandonment on the
internet or selling more tennis shoes, it relates to
making sure that I instantly know if I've been
identified as pre-diabetic through my physical that I
should engage in this wellness program and I should
take these steps and I need to come every quarter to
get my A1C checked, and so I think you're seeing a
convergence in general around this idea that you
leverage all the data that's already there, and when
I hear "internet of things," really what I hear is
there's a lot of data in a lot of places and you need
to leverage it in a way that delivers some meaningful
result and I think that's where we're headed. It's
not about the box and we see this big-time in health
care where these instruments that they spend hundreds
of millions on and back-office systems that they
spend hundreds of millions on, yet that does nothing
?
to improve the customer experience, all it does is
make it so that you can bill for and code for stuff
better and that's not really the end-all-be-all, so
the chief medical officer in the health care world is
getting into this game as well of how do I deliver an
amazing experience, so I can see actually a very
powerful combination of if you had the skills of a
chief marketing officer and a chief medical officer,
that would be awesome, we need more targets like
that.
COUNCIL: A CMMO, I gotcha. Pete, I want to
throw this one at you, and we're starting to get some
audience and Twitter questions. What's mentorship
like here in Indianapolis? Describe the state of
that for us.
SERVAAS: I do think mentorship is a place
where we've had some success. On a personal level,
my grandfather had been involved with over 40
businesses from Indianapolis. Unfortunately, if he'd
hear of software, I think he would've thought of
something soft to wear rather than being technology
related, but he still worked with us to give us our
first loan of $100,000 and I think that's really key
is that especially many in the crowd who may not have
the technical background and experience in tech
?
really trying to learn and understand what's going on
and to be able to be a mentor and apply some of what
you've learned in another industry into the newer
one. For us again with DoubleMap we've had Mark Hill
and Mike over at TechPoint, great examples of two
people who have been entrepreneurs and successful and
now have really devoted all of their energy and
passion into helping others have that success, so
they've really helped us on our path from the early
days. Jeff Kirk, our attorney with Taft, has been
really phenomenal believing in us since Day 1, so I
think finding these kind of people. Lastly, Mike
Simmons with T2, which is a local success on the
software side, I think all of these individuals have
really helped to support us as we've made critical
decisions, as we've been wondering whether or not
we're doing something right. I do think that some
formal programs which CheckPoint is leading help to
connect those who aren't lucky off the bat to have
mentors because it's so important in the early stage
to have somebody who has been through it, who has
seen the same problems and the ups and downs
supporting you as you go through all of those
yourself.
COUNCIL: We've got an audience question here
?
that has to do with cyber security and I don't know
if anybody's an expert on it but I'm going to throw
this one out and see who can swing at it. What are
the lessons to be learned from the Anthem data hack?
BRAR: I can talk to this a bit. So to say
that security is extremely complicated would be the
understatement of the century and I think really a
lot of blame is being pushed into the CIO and the
kind of technology departments of these companies,
but the real issue is that the business really at the
CEO level, they're not approving the budget that's
required to secure these systems, right, at the end
of the day, so there's a lot of known threats and
known issues and 100 percent secure is also basically
impossible, right, it's asymptotic to infinity to
take all the risk out of your system, right, but I do
think there's a rude awakening happening particularly
at the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 level where they're
going to reassess just what they think about their
technology teams that are enabling the business and
how much risk are they going to continue to try to
get out of the system and so I think we're going to
start to see that happening and you're seeing lots of
CEOs paying more attention, starting to want to have
more proactive discussions, they're asking the CIO
?
"Hey, what's going on? What's our security
strategy?" So unfortunately I think it took a series
of wallops for us to kind of get that conversation
started but I think we're going to see a lot of
momentum, but, you know, an analogy I use a lot with
cyber security is, and not to scare people, but if
your house is marked, right, if someone's marked your
home, the chances of them not getting in, they're
going to get in, they're going to get in your house
if they mark your house, right, and so if you think
about corporate infrastructure, the same exists. The
thing you have to then do is how do you stop the
damage once they are in, right, so we really need to
think about how we think about security, it's not
actually that they'll never get in, it's what's
possible once they are in, right, and our homes are
all also just as insecure, right, and ultimately no
matter how many alarm systems you have, if somebody
really wanted to get in your house, they'd get in
your house.
COUNCIL: Gotcha.
BOSTIC: A quick follow-up to that, I think
when people talk about cloud computing sometimes they
have this thought that that creates vulnerability and
it's actually I think quite the opposite. Most of
?
the vulnerabilities exist in the old-school
establishment. I think there was an article the
other day again about some IT guy who had taken tape
backups of like 30,000 patients and put it in his
backpack and was driving it to the off-site secure
storage place and stopped off to buy some smokes or
whatever and somebody breaks in and steals his bag
and there goes 30,000 patient records. When we
started hc1 and called it hc1.com, that was pretty
bold when you're going into a health care environment
where people are sensitive about their information,
right, and one of the early meetings we had I'll
never forget, we were down in south Florida and a big
health care business down there and their head of
compliance was in the meeting and she said something
like "I'm not sure I want all of our data up there in
the clouds" and we first pointed out it wasn't
actually "in the clouds," and then we talked about
"Well, where is your data now?" and the reality was
that their data was in this data center which is
basically like a closet down the hall and they're in
south Florida, so we talked a little bit about the
weather possibilities of that and "How's your
continuity going to hold up and what if somebody just
backed a truck into the wall and stole those servers,
?
you know, they'd have all of that data, whereas if
you take a true cloud model and you do it right,
you're encrypted at every level," and like Aman was
saying, if somebody's trying to go after you and you
know it and you're able to do something to strike
back versus just we have — like if you look at an
Anthem it's probably like a house with a thousand
additions on it and there are so many different gaps
there that it's really hard, so I think the
investment he's talking about a lot of it is probably
reinvention of infrastructure to take advantage of
the security that the cloud brings.
BRAR: We oftentimes are faced with trying to
convince our clients to do a security assessment,
right, it's actually a really challenging sale. Hc1
actually proactively signs up for them, they call us
and say "Hey, we want proactive security assessments
so we can keep getting ahead of this," and I think
you really have to change from a reactive kind of
perspective where you're begrudgingly paying for a
security assessment and so that would mean starting
to change and I think we'll see more of that.
COUNCIL: Gotcha. I think we've got time for
one more question here and somebody in the audience
wants to know what are some of the market
?
opportunities and business areas in which Indiana
companies can be particularly well positioned to
capture the lead nationally, anybody got any thoughts
on that? No takers?
BOSTIC: Can you rephrase the question?
COUNCIL: What are some of the market
opportunities that Indiana companies, tech companies
in particular, would be well positioned to capture
the lead nationally?
KOPP: I mean I think we can do anything we
want to do, honestly, I mean if you look at the
breadth and depth of our ecosystem, I think we can go
in a lot of areas, but one of the biggest gaps I see
in the market right now is most CMOs are still
driving as if looking in a rearview mirror instead of
out the windshield, so even if you think about today
as kind of e-mail marketing campaigns or setting up
communications, they're using it based on setting up
a campaign in advance and then creating an experience
and sending out a message. I think there's a much
better opportunity for this emerging category called
predictive analytics to really look at, based on what
you've done in the past how do you best leverage that
data to deliver an experience to a customer and that
could be through the internet of things, it could be
?
in a number of different ways, but I don't think
marketers are doing a good enough job fully
leveraging all the data they have. They're doing a
great job of collecting it all but they're not doing
a really good job at leveraging it all kind of end to
end throughout the experience in a way that is
predictive and really helpful to the end consumer.
BRAR: One of the things I'd like to see out
of Indianapolis, I think we have some Walgreen's with
software capability and a lot of strength in medicine
and therapy areas, and it feels to me that there's a
conversation waiting to be had here in Indianapolis
where some of the world's great medical problems
start being solved with software. Actually, we're
very well positioned for something like this given
the kind of talent we have in the local marketplace
and someone out there has to go do it, right, and I
think if you really think about being out in the
backyard, you know, software is leading the universe
and we have a tremendous background as a city and
state in health care and life sciences and if we can
bring those two worlds together I think there's a
tremendous amount of market opportunity.
BOSTIC: That's a good point. I was talking
to Titus from Regenstrief before we started the
?
discussion here and if you think about the hundred
plus terabytes of data that we have at hc1 that we're
using to personalize the health care experience and
you think about how fast that's growing and you look
at what Regenstrief has as their assets, I think
those kinds of collaborations, if you can get to the
focus that it takes and get everyone committed, there
are some big breakthroughs that can change not only
in America but the world.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.