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The first day of this year’s Rally innovation conference will have a national television audience, thanks to a partnership between event creator Elevate Ventures and Indianapolis-based marketing, strategy and investment firm Prolific.
Rally, which drew about 3,000 domestic and international attendees in each of its first two years, aims to advance the state’s innovation economy by bringing together innovators, investors, business leaders, academics and thought leaders from Indiana and beyond and from a variety of industry sectors.
This year’s event is scheduled for Sept. 24-25 at the Indiana Convention Center.
Prolific had been planning to do an event of its own, the Prolific Growth Conference, which was to be an invitation-only event for a couple of hundred attendees. The event was to feature a host of national-name speakers, with television coverage from media partner Fox Business Network.
The Prolific event was to have taken place a week before Rally, said Prolific CEO Brad Benbow. When someone pointed out the close timing, Benbow said Prolific and Elevate Ventures decided to bring the two events together.
Under this arrangement, Prolific will be responsible for booking the mainstage speakers for Day 1 of Rally. Prolific’s portion of the event will be branded as the Prolific Growth Summit at Rally, and the speakers’ remarks will be open to all Rally attendees.
“If you think about it, it becomes sort of obvious,” Benbow said. “Growth and innovation are close cousins—they sort of go together.”
Prolific partnership draws Fox Business broadcast
Benbow said Fox Business is still a media partner for Prolific’s portion of the event and will be broadcasting live from Rally on Sept. 24.
Prolific has also booked several other national-name speakers for the event, including the retail chain Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO, David Green. Benbow said Prolific plans to publicly announce several other speakers in weeks to come. As part of its partnership with Elevate Ventures, Prolific will cover costs associated with the speakers it books, Benbow said.
Television personality Kevin O’Leary, a regular on the ABC show “Shark Tank,” will also be a main-stage speaker on the first day of Rally. But O’Leary will be speaking as part of Rally, and Prolific’s speaker lineup will begin immediately after O’Leary’s keynote address, Elevate Ventures told IBJ. O’Leary had already been booked by Elevate Ventures before the partnership with Prolific was announced.
Having an outside entity responsible for some of the speakers’ costs should be helpful to Elevate Ventures, which told IBJ in late April that it was not counting on the financial support that the Indiana Economic Development Corp. provided for the event as one of its sponsors during its first two years.
In 2023, the IEDC contributed $1.75 million toward the event’s $2.9 million budget. In 2024, the IEDC contributed $1 million toward the event’s $2.5 million budget. Elevate Ventures previously told IBJ that this year’s Rally budget is smaller than last year’s, though it declined to provide a specific number.
Rally persists amid tension at Statehouse
The relationship between the IEDC, Elevate Ventures and Gov. Mike Braun’s office has been marked by tension in recent months.
At an April 24 press conference, Braun announced that he would hire an independent auditor to investigate the IEDC, the state’s economic development agency, and its affiliated organizations.
Neither Braun nor Adams detailed the problems or concerns that led to the decisions but pointed to anonymous accusations reported by Hannah News Service that raised questions about the relationship between the IEDC and Elevate.
Elevate CEO Christopher Day did not respond to a request for comment on the Rally-Prolific partnership. Previously, Day has said the organization has been and will continue to be “transparent with the IEDC and the Governor’s office in both the work we do and our stewardship of resources.”
Benbow said Prolific did not decide to join forces with Rally as a way to shore up that event.
“That’s not our motivation,” Benbow said. “We created this idea for a growth conference three or four years ago, and this is just good, heads-up collaboration.”
Several other entities have tucked their events into the Rally conference in years past. In 2024 the Indiana Technology and Innovation Association, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and Indianapolis-based business group InnoPower all hosted their own events at Rally.
Though the Prolific partnership is new this year, other elements of Rally will be similar to its first two years.
As was the case in 2023 and 2024, the 2025 Rally event schedule includes a pitch contest offering up to $1 million in prizes to each of five startups as well as discussion panels, networking opportunities and keynote speakers.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Kevin O’Leary, the previously announced mainstage speaker for this fall’s Rally innovation conference, will not appear as a speaker for Prolific’s portion of the event.
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