State tool connects Hoosier entrepreneurs with resources

The Indiana Economic Development Corp.’s new online portal, ConnectIND, has an ambitious mission: Help entrepreneurs from all industries in all corners of the state find the resources they need to succeed.

ConnectIND, which had its public launch last week, has two components. There’s the website, ConnectIND.com, where individuals can find information on everything from funding sources to coworking spaces to business incubators. There’s also a human component—a network of 10 navigators being hired around the state to offer free guidance and support for the portal’s users.

The IEDC has committed just more than $2.2 million to the project to date.

The portal currently includes nearly 3,000 resources entrepreneurs can engage with, including venture capital firms such as Indianapolis-based angel investors VisionTech Partners, educational and networking events such as a coffee gathering at an Evansville coworking spot, and business organizations such as local chambers of commerce.

“We’re attempting to catalog resources for entrepreneurs across 92 counties,” said David Watkins, the IEDC’s senior vice president of entrepreneurship and small business. “The portal is intended for the broadest interpretation of what it means to be an entrepreneur.”

Until now, the work of connecting entrepreneurs with resources mainly happened through word-of-mouth, said Jacob Schpok, a partner at Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures. ConnectIND represents a big improvement.

“I would say that one of the major challenges of starting a company, or growing, is knowing which resource providers are most appropriate for a company at any given point in time,” Schpok said. “And this portal really works to solve that problem by making sure that the resources that are available are transparent.”

Elevate Ventures is a not-for-profit that serves as a venture capital firm for the IEDC and invests in Indiana startups.

Schpok said he’s especially excited about the human navigators who are part of the state’s effort. Highlighting those navigators on the resource portal represents “a huge leap forward in the way that we think about connecting entrepreneurs to the services that they need at any point in time.”

Elevate Ventures has its own team of entrepreneurs in residence around the state, Schpok said, but those individuals have narrower fields of expertise that fit within the focus areas of life sciences, software and hard tech. The ConnectIND navigators will offer broader-based guidance that should connect with a much wider range of entrepreneurs, he said.

So far, the IEDC has added five navigators, each of whom is working for a regional Small Business Development Center office under a grant agreement with the IEDC. The IEDC is working to hire the remaining five navigators. It is awarding grants totaling $2 million, or $100,000 per SBDC office, for the next two years, to cover the navigators’ salaries. Indiana’s 10 regional SBDC offices are managed by the IEDC.

ConnectIND launched last week in English only, but this week the IEDC expected to roll out a tool allowing users to translate the site into Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Korean, French, German, Yiddish, Vietnamese and Punjabi. Those languages were chosen because they are the state’s most spoken after English, Watkins said.

Origins

The idea for the portal traces back to 2020, when the IEDC was working to connect Indiana companies with resources that could help them weather the disruption of COVID. While searching for those resources, the IEDC realized there was no single source to find them, Watkins said.

Work on the project kicked into gear after Brad Chambers was named Indiana secretary of commerce in 2021 and identified entrepreneurship as one of the state’s top economic development priorities, Watkins said.

To create the portal, the IEDC hired Baltimore-based EcoMap Technologies Inc. under a three-year, $245,333 contract.

EcoMap uses proprietary algorithms to pull information into the portal from elsewhere on the web, and the IEDC’s entrepreneurship team vets the information. But at this point, some of the entries in the portal don’t include much detail.

The goal is for the IEDC and others around the state to add to the portal over time so it’s continually enlarged and updated. Users can apply to become verified managers for their organizations, which grants them the ability to edit and add to their profiles.

“We fully intend that this is a living, breathing resource,” Watkins said.

And Watkins is optimistic that will happen. Following a beta test period, the IEDC rolled out ConnectIND to a “friends and family” group of users the week before its public launch. Over the course of that week, Watkins said, the database grew from about 2,000 pieces of information to 2,800.

A similar platform on a smaller scale exists in the form of NWI BizHub, which launched in November 2020 and includes entrepreneur-focused information for seven counties in northwestern Indiana.

That portal was launched by the Legacy Foundation in Merrillville along with fellow community foundations in Crown Point and La Porte County, the Indiana SBDC Northwest and the Center of Workforce Innovations in Valparaiso.

Currently, the platform has information from 76 resource partners, including chambers of commerce, municipalities and universities, said Donna Catalano, outreach and engagement manager at the Legacy Foundation.

Catalano said the platform is promoted through a combination of blog posts and newsletters, plus in-person networking events in communities served by the portal. The first such event, last fall, drew about 100 attendees.

“It’s been a work in progress,” Catalano said of the portal.

NWI BizHub uses a platform created by Kansas City, Missouri-based SourceLink, which launched in 2003 and is currently working with more than 70 communities nationwide that range from rural communities to states and major metro areas.

SourceLink specializes in entrepreneur-focused portals, but it has also done work focused on other groups or subject areas, including affordable housing, broadband access and veterans, said the company’s director of global partnerships and engagement, Dara Macan.

The most successful portals, Macan said, have a dedicated organization or team that markets the platform and are connected to real people who can help guide the portal’s users. “We think that this element of this work is really critical.”

‘An absolute complement’

Some of the other organizations that serve Hoosier entrepreneurs say they view ConnectIND as a valuable addition to their offerings.

“We’re really excited to see that the IEDC is taking on this portal and creating it,” said Laura Schafsnitz, spokeswoman for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Indiana district. “I think it’s just one more resource that we can add to our workbook of what we’re able to provide.”

As you might expect, the SBA’s own website includes lots of information for entrepreneurs, including how-to guides on tasks like writing a business plan, information on the SBA’s lending programs and guidance on becoming an exporter or a government contractor.

Schafsnitz sees ConnectIND as “an absolute complement” to the SBA’s website. In fact, some of the SBA offerings are listed on the ConnectIND portal.

Entrepreneurs who might not visit the SBA’s website directly might discover it via ConnectIND, Schafsnitz said. “We absolutely hope so.”

TechPoint CEO Ting Gootee said the portal will be of use not just to entrepreneurs but also to the organizations that serve them. TechPoint is an Indianapolis-based not-for-profit that exists to support and grow the state’s tech sector.

TechPoint is working to be more active outside the Indianapolis area, Gootee said. As part of that effort, she thinks using ConnectIND could help familiarize her organization with available resources in other communities so TechPoint officials can determine where they could be helpful. “If you don’t know what the market looks like, it’s a little bit tougher to fill in the gap.”

Gootee said she also likes the “human touch” element that the navigators bring to ConnectIND, and she’s eager to see whether the effort catches hold as hoped.

“I think we’re all anxious to see what value founders and operators attach to this.”

Watkins said the IEDC plans to conduct a road show this summer and fall in connection with the state’s regional SBDC offices and local entrepreneur-serving organizations. The road-show events will introduce local entrepreneurs to ConnectIND and help them sign up for the portal.

By year’s end, Watkins said, the IEDC has set a goal of having at least 1,000 entrepreneurs active on the portal.•