from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt Hunter CEO at Powder Keg and I'll be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher Tove day CEO at Elevate Ventures and Nate spangle head of community at Powder Keg and on the show today is David Becker CEO and chairman of first internet Bank David Becker is a lifelong entrepreneur having founded five companies featured on inc's list of fastest growing companies most recently first internet Bank Rick software and one Bridge stood up gave a timeout sign whistle I said guys I'll solve it for you I'm gonna quit and I'll go to it myself and hopefully you'll be customers someday David is also dedicated to building support structures for tech companies in Indiana having served as chairman of both techpoint and Central Indiana Community Foundation as well as a board member of the Central Indiana corporate partnership he currently serves as CEO of First internet bank which he founded in 1999 and today has more than 4 billion in assets David welcome to the show thank you Matt looking forward to it it's gonna be awesome the legend the legend the man the myth the legend I said this before we turned the recording on but if you if there was a Mount Rushmore of Midwest entrepreneurs you would absolutely be on that Mount Rushmore we just need some mountains here maybe southern Indiana somewhere I don't know could we get that on the side of the J dub for uh absolutely that's a great idea the biggest fat head of all time right yeah yeah just a big sticker yeah I love that I love it David I would love to learn a little bit more just about your childhood upbringing early exposure to entrepreneurship because I think a lot of our conversations one you you've been like on bat phone hey can you tell me some feedback on my own entrepreneurial venture so selfishly a lot of the conversations have been around my own business so I'd love to hear just about your early exposure to Business and Entrepreneurship when you were younger yeah actually my father would tell you I've been independent since I was eight years old dating myself here back in the day there used to be the Indianapolis times and afternoon newspaper you had the star in the morning times in the afternoon and I got a Times newspaper route again dating myself I was on a stingray bicycle the kind of banana song I'm getting a great mental image here yeah and I'm so I'm running around tooling around on that and then I realized hey have I had a 10-speed bicycle I could actually drive a little faster get a few more customers I won national sales contests for the times I got to go see Washington DC on a four-day bus trip which was interesting with a bunch of nine ten-year-old kids on a bus and a couple chaperones and uh so that was the beginning I learned sales marketing I had the collection routine have I sold it I had to collect and really worked out a little budget my dad did not get me a 10-speed bicycle he got it for me and then charged me back so I learned cash flow I learned the whole game and that was the beginning of the end at eight years old that's awesome I had a paper out for six years growing up but I never had to sell anything selling the journaling Courier they they sold for me I just had to get them there on time Logistics business yeah I'm curious how you sold newspapers back then how do you sell the Indianapolis times was that door-to-door yeah literally you go door and knock on them and say hey are you interested in most folks would at least sign up for uh they had a trial subscription or a program where you pay for three months get three months free so I could get about everybody to do it nobody wouldn't tell an eight-year-old kid nine-year-old kid you're not gonna do this when it was like two bucks or something total but uh and then the key was to keep them and that was going back to the service part delivering on time when it was raining you had them wrapped in plastic so they didn't get a soggy paper on the front and I always took them up to the doorstep I didn't Wing him into the front yard except for one house that had a very large German Shepherd yeah they got that close to the front door and figured that was good you don't want to risk it I would love to be a fly on the wall in like the Indianapolis times the the meeting where they're like you know what eight-year-olds that's who we need that's going to get the job done yeah absolutely so from there on was like this is it business is my game or were there other things that you you were interested in exploring when you were a kid no actually that was about it because shortly thereafter when I was going into seventh grade my parents moved out to the country my dad grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota my mother grew up on a tobacco farm in Kentucky and we were living in Eagledale just north of the motor Speedway and I had 60 of my closest friends within 50 feet of me it seemed they both wanted to go back to the country so we were building a house didn't get it done in time for us to start the school system so we rented a house on a 100 Acre Farm and they're the closest neighbor was a half a mile away and I thought I had died I was trying to figure out what I did to piss my parents off why they took me to my life yeah yeah I'm done I'll never have friends again uh and there it was the same game I got a there was gas General store which had gas pumps out front they sold lawn mowers they sold Saddles they sold everything so I kept the entrepreneurial play going working with them struck a deal with the owner if he took a lawnmower in on trade and I could get it refurbished I would get half of what it was worth when he sold it later on and did that then I worked with farmers and I would put up hay based on the number of Bales not a per hour basis because I knew I could out hustle most yes do the other games so yeah it's just been kind of ingrained all the way through pun intended yes Toff and I both have backgrounds in farming I didn't know about the North Dakota routes my mom grew up on a cattle farm in North Dakota and my grandfather kind of founded that farm I don't know 100 plus years ago or my great grandfather found that farm 100 plus years ago are there elements of farming that you think that you learn through your family that you use today in business oh without question the farming plague my grandfather did the same thing they were down in the Badlands and Dakota actually the right almost on the side of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park today and he went out with my grandmother during the Depression and a Model T pickup truck with two cows in the back and uh Ted's last Roundup and they literally would go cross-country from North Dakota down to Kansas to take him to Market and Chuck Wagon in that whole routine he had 840 cows run the market and then they moved back to Wisconsin outside of Sheboygan where most of my dad's family is from and the play there he started raising chickens for eggs and he wound up making his own feed and mixing the grain or whatever and the quality of the eggs was so good that the restaurants in Chicago would send up trucks two times a week to pick up things directly from him instead of sending them into the market so yeah my grandfather set the stage my dad grew up out in North Dakota my he was one of eight children to run the farm my mother was one of 14 children to run the tobacco farm and the play in fact part of my drive and focus I was the first one in my family on either side and I think I counted it up one time I've got over 100 cousins to actually make it to college and part of that was my mom wanted to go to college he actually graduated valedictorian of the little school she went in Jamestown Kentucky but my grandfather said now no daughter of mine's going to go to college you have children and you have a family and you take care of the house you don't need a college education to do that so different times yeah totally different times and she's the one that planted the seat in me that if you get an opportunity you got to go to college so and that and the whole play and I was actually telling somebody the story this morning when I was at Nepal I had a chance to have lunch with Ross Perot the founder of EDS wow and I believed at the time and still believe today that your biggest success is business is the people that you're able to get to work for you and I asked Ross I said what's your secret I said you have a phenomenal company and literally your number one asset is people how do you get good quality people he said nobody's really asked me that but I went back had head of HR go and find out what are the characteristics in the top 10 performers we have in the company today the up-and-coming ranks what common characteristics they have eight out of ten grew up on dairy farms in the midwest if you think about it cows get milk twice a day 365 days a year if you're sick and the weather's bad whatever it is you just figure out how to get it done so he actually added a line to the bottom of the application process at EDS said by chance did you grow up on a dairy farm in the Midwest and checked yes he immediately went to the top of the Heap and I think that part of it just their work ethic and the desire that you relied upon yourself to get things done I think that suited me well in getting the companies off the ground in the early stages so when you went to DePaul how did you pick DePaul and when you went there were you thinking all along that this is my go to college and I'm gonna go get a job corporate executive route or were you thinking I'm gonna go learn build relationships and figure out what I want to start out of school and then what you do after school I wound up at DePaul kind of by accident my parents didn't have the financial wherewithal to send me to college so the only school that I could apply to that I thought of at the time that I could get in without a congressional appointment was at Coast Guard Academy if you go to any of the other military academies you have to have a letter from the senator whoever in your state Coast Guard Academy started with ten thousand two hundred applications ten thousand four hundred applications something like that but they Whittle it down during my senior year in school from one to ten thousand to the actually accepted 420.
oh and I made the cut FBI came out interviewed my neighbors and stuff it freaked out everybody Indiana first time that had happened in your neighborhood when the feds are running around unless you were moonshining right there's no reason for the feds did they have black coats and sunglasses sunglasses dark cars black wall tires it was the whole game that's quite a scene so I got through that process and I was literally going to go so supposed to go into July 4th and one of the things that attracted me to the Coast Guard Academy they still today have a three-masted schooner you go to New London Connecticut and jump on that boat you go south as far as they can get and come back so you're back at Labor Day to start classes so I thought yeah what a hell of a way to learn about sailing and the ocean and whatever and I've always loved the ocean and water but it was 1971 and the Vietnam War was going on and about six weeks before I went to say I do I decided I can't do this somebody's going to tell me the score of a floor with a toothbrush I'm going to tell them where to put the toothbrush I'm going to wind up in Vietnam help him get it there yes I thought that doesn't make a lot of sense so I went to my high school guidance counselor and she goes you've missed all the cutoff dates this is like mid-may and I said I didn't stay in there but I need to do something even if I have to set out of here so she goes my husband went to Nepal let's go over and talk to him and from Monrovia it's only about a 30 minute drive 40 minute drive so I went in and lo and behold spent an afternoon with admissions toured the campus next day I got a full ride scholarship from him hey yo worked out awesome and made it through the four-year program I went in really honestly thought I was going to go to law school I've had a lot of pivots in my life the say no to the Coast Guard Academy which is the first time my father and probably about the only time I ever dropped an F-bomb my God what the heck nothing is wrong with you because I don't have no money this is a free ride you can't do that then I pivoted and went to DePaul University I was going to go to law school about two weeks before I was supposed to graduate I decided yeah I really don't want to do that either so I hooked up with a Headhunter in Indianapolis long story short I got a job with General Electric Credit Corporation during the days of Jack Welch I was running the show in the credit side at that point in time and it was phenomenal I still today say that was my working MBA they spent a ton of money on education and I was in the management trainee program only worked with him for about three and a half years but I was at a position where they ever seniority was over 20 years and I hit that corporate wall I couldn't go anywhere I couldn't do anything and I did have the reputation I had a couple things that blew up GE one I asked in a public forum I asked Jack Welsh a question and I survived what was the question to this day I can't remember what it was but he made a presentation about where the Credit Corporation was going we're up in Chicago I put my hand up in the air my boss is trying to pull my hand yeah he said you don't ask Jack a question it's Neutron Jack he comes to town the building's stay and the people disappear yeah and he said young man back there you got a question and I said yes sir I do and stood up had a microphone asking the question he answered it and then there was definitely silence nobody else asked the question he goes okay let me give you a couple closing remarks and he finished up and then he goes young man in the back would you please walk up to the stage I'd like to talk to you for a minute my boss says oh God he's going to fire you I'll get you back to Indianapolis from there you're on your own went up ask the question and introduced myself he said hey I got to tell you I've done this show in six different cities you're the first person that pardon the French had the Bulls to ask me a question and there was a damn good question so I just want to shake hands and say thank you I really appreciate it and so that was the place that's a good lesson there oh tremendous lesson just go for it yeah go for it you got nothing to lose and I was 22 years old and if he wanted to fire me so be it yeah and if he did you wouldn't you shouldn't be there anyway shouldn't be there to begin with yeah over something like that yeah if I asked a really a name or stupid question or call them an or something to fire me but I was being pretty nice and then I tried to get another position I wanted to do something else and I found found out after the force was over that my boss was holding me back because my numbers enabled him to get the best moments he'd ever had in his career and he was only years away from retirement so I learned a big corporate lesson there as well so I got the exit interview from the HR department down in Cincinnati that covered our area and when I got the questionnaire it was like four pages and I wrote across the front page in big letters if I thought you really cared I'd fill this out and buck Buchanan who was the regional director for HR in Cincinnati tracked me down he said Dave I've been doing this job for 30 years and that's the best answer I've ever seen on this form I will tell you your file was had four stars which meant they thought you could go to General office and he said when I sent this response of yours up to General office he want me to try and recruit you back and another day too felt it was probably the best answer they'd ever seen I said it's too late my man I made a commitment and I'm moving on but it's interesting to me when I hear about your early stories of like early career Dave Becker is you really trust it it seems like you really trusted yourself yeah it almost went to Vietnam last minute now this doesn't feel right let's figure out a different plan almost went to the Naval Academy uh it doesn't quite feel right let's almost went into law school but no maybe not quite right and whether or not that always happened right before the actual decision went through at the end of the day I think part of it goes back to my grandfather and sitting and talking with him I wrote business plans for years about everything from car washes to convenience stores service stations laundry mats you name it I had all these crazy ideas and when I actually came up with the idea of the RDS or remember David the first services company I built I outlined it to my grandfather and he said hey this makes a lot of sense you said you know the industry you know the play you can hire the people that can do the programming as a political science major I still to this day I'll give my kids the iPhone to fix for me and I didn't have the technical chaps but I understood the industry in the play and the the piece of advice that he gave me which has stuck with me and technically I was doing it before he gave it to me is no matter what happens they can't eat you yeah you as an individual always survive so have confidence in yourself whatever happens you're going to make it and you'll get over the Finish Line one way or another and he said and by the way you're young enough you could file bankruptcy four or five times that's right so go for it and uh I think yeah it it's just extreme my brother and sister are both how the hell did you get all the self-confidence and we didn't have it and I think part of it I was the oldest child so I was the one that was pushed to get out and do it my life got blown up when I was 9 10 years old and I had to get land on my feet and figure that out in a Countryside where my motive Transportation was either the two feet or a bicycle and there's many times I was doing stuff at school and I'd screw around and miss the bus and a three and a half mile walk home so it wasn't that's a lesson you don't forget yeah yeah so it seems like you have like not seams you've had a lot of early professional career like success so what are a couple tips to that 22 year old that's getting that working MBA what would you say to that person absorb everything that you can learn from everything you the mistakes you make or the things you can learn if you're ever offered an opportunity which G was phenomenal at they taught me I took an Accounting 101 class at school and I would tell anybody still in college to get before you get out taking accounting 101.
you need to understand an income and expense statement you need to understand how that relates to balance sheet just to take care of your personal finance let alone what you might do in the business Community but absorb absolutely everything you can and as I tell people and talk to the ore fellows group religiously over the years that if it's a job and you don't like what you're doing change because life is way too short even though I've been playing around for 50 years out here you've got to enjoy what you're doing and you'll find it and just again confidence in yourself absorb all the information you can get and if it doesn't feel right move on I love that and on the opposite side of the coin for let's say the CEO that wants to do better at tracking and retaining young Talent what would you tell them given the Rope my management Mantra is I'll give you all the Rope you want you can swing or you can hang yeah and particularly this generation coming out of school today they want to do things they want to be involved they want to be engaged and if you micromanage them or give them just menial tasks they're going to get bored to tears they're going to move on and a heartbeat so you hired him for a reason let him go do it and if they succeed and I tell everybody in the organization if you don't make mistakes you're not on far enough out on the edge and doing what you should be doing the only time you'll get fired around here for making a mistake is you keep repeating it that doesn't fly if you keep doing the same thing expecting the different result that didn't play but you're here for a reason and there are no sacred cows in any of the companies I've built over the last 40 years everything's up for grabs in fact we have a group of Summer interns in a couple weeks here they're going to make their final presentation to the senior management team at the bank and what they're charged with the day they come in is find something even as an intern find something in the organization you would change whether it's in the area you're working in if it's something you think that bank should be differently and it's phenomenal we get anywhere from 12 to 15 interns a year we'll come away with six or seven just phenomenal ideas because they have no blinders on its own new experience to them they haven't been beat up by Society or the business world so it's fresh great ideas and it works fabulously I had to convince my team that this really is viable and valuable but once we got over that hurdle it's worked out phenomenal are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling full-length documentaries they have got the expertise to take your brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in and they do amazing work all the videos across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate Powder Keg or check out alchemyfilmco.
com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all of your video needs how did you come up with your first idea for your first tech company maybe not your first idea but how do you come up with the idea for your first tech company I was forced into it I was a consultant with the Indiana Credit Union League and I had she's long passed away so this is okay I did a Consulting gig for the University of Notre Dame Credit Union and Ruth Kelly was the CEO and I said hey guys right now everything's running really smooth but everything looks like we're gonna go into an economic downturn this is back in the late 70s early 80s when rates are starting to blow up like we're doing today and I said you need to look at this boom boom and so I drove back from South Bend got home about 1am I had to go to Southern Indiana down in Evansville the next day so I'm in the office at 5am and the CEO had already left a note on my desk Dave see me before you go to Evansville and what they do I walk in he goes I got a call from Ruth Kelly about 11 o'clock last night you understand she's chairman of the board and you were seeing some things that weren't really great about her institution I said more and I was just forecasting what's coming and I said if they didn't get control of the delinquency they had customers all over the world there's just some things fundamentally they just trusted everybody and I said I live in the world of trust but verify and there were some things she needs to do or she could have a real problem if the economy goes south he goes tell you what next time before you do something like that let me know ahead of time so I can soften it a little bit going in and he said if a lot of what you talked about was the computer services that they were very archaic and they weren't automating things that they should be he said do you have an alternative I said No at that point in time as Merchants Bank the original frog bank here in Indianapolis was the primary provider in the state and I said their product they're selling banking products to a group that has a lot more flexibility and power I said they really don't work and he said again you keep saying bad things about them but they pay part of your paycheck because our services Corp we get oh I said the kickback he goes no it's not a kickback it's a service fee for backing up their services he so he told me you got six months either find an alternative or start saying good things I said okay I'll find an alternative so literally over the next six months I continue to do the day job but I kept searching for an alternative long story short found a software product in Grand Rapids wrote A business plan with the idea that the services Corp would start their own Data Center and we'd sell product to credit unions around the state made a two-hour presentation to the board of directors they spent 45 minutes not discussing whether it's a good idea or a bad idea of what committee should do it and is this EFT is this Services course whatever so literally another one of those turning points in my life I stood up gave a timeout sign whistle and said guys I'll solve it for you I'm gonna quit and I'll go do it myself and hopefully you'll be customers someday so I literally walked out of the boardroom and went and cleaned out my desk went home called the guy in Michigan I said hey meeting him go quiet I thought it was going to so instead of buying the software what's the chance of you selling to me wholesale let me retail he didn't want to go outside of the state of Michigan and he said we can do that and I he goes when you want to get together looked at my watch and I said I'll meet you gave him a restaurant Grand Rapids I'll meet you there for dinner at 6 30.
he said tonight I said yeah tonight so went up 6 30 did a handshake deal literally drove back to Indianapolis and left up there about midnight went to my attorney's office at Keystone of the crossing literally got in the building set down in front of the door went to sleep passed out they came in the morning they go hey what's going on what are you doing here in the hallway I said I had a long night had to go to Grand Rapids yada yada and we didn't get the thing worked out like we thought at the league so I need to start a company today and get off the ground that was it that was the start of RDS on April 8th 1981. you really burn the ships on that one totally actually the head of the services Corp on the way out the front door he goes Dave he said man I don't understand what in the world you're doing he said you've got such a reputation not only in Indiana but in the midwest you could Coast for 30 years and nobody's going to touch you I said no I don't because that's not the life I want to lead I said I want to do things he goes when it doesn't work out call me up I'll get your whole job back and that was a that's motivator I could have had it in the world and I I said Dan that's not going to happen but we'll see you someday so do you think entrepreneurs need to burn the ships in order to be successful I would say sometimes I would tell people particularly with relationships with other individuals like with Dan I didn't burn that relationship because invariably in life people will recycle probably more so than the business side of it but when you know the and even with the trade Association the folks in that room that day 20 out of 24 wound up being customers of mine through my services organization so I I made a tremendous change I didn't blame it on them I blamed it on me and said that hey you're a pretty stoic institution in a lot of respects and you don't have the flexibility that I would as an individual to get this off the ground so it's probably better for me to go do it and at the end it worked out in fact Mort actually who was the CEO of the Credit Union League at the time became a phenomenal supporter of mine opened a lot of doors for me and it worked out really well so in the the first advertising piece we got put together on the front cover was a lot of somebody who really understood Credit Unions started a computer company and that was a whole play I knew what needed to go in one side come out the other what went on in between I had no idea but I was able to hire great people that could make a dance across the table if I wanted it to that's a that's a great advertisement and I am I was thinking about what you were saying and it's almost burn the ships in your career but don't burn the bridges to the relationships yeah it is it is amazing how every five or ten years these relationships come full circle that you never even imagined yeah we're a great example of that you spoke at one of our first Verge events back when it was Verge I don't know 13 years ago you probably did too Dave on Kessler Boulevard that old house crazy is that the Kessler mansion with the dolphin oh the Dolphins crazy stuff we like both mayoral candidates there yeah that was an awesome talk I think we have that one recorded actually so we have to dig that one up for them from the archives what I think is interesting about these stories is the name of this podcast is get in and the cool concept is like two things it's number one it's just don't be afraid to just jump in right don't be afraid to ask the question in front of Jack Welch right because all those folks they're looking for the brightest Minds right and if those leaders aren't then that's back to you that's a place you probably don't want to be right if you want to enjoy creative things we talked about gut feel right which is a really physiological thing it's we talk about pivot I just think about all these things I think a lot of people maybe talk about fear how I think a lot of people whether it relates to entrepreneurship or people in their career path there's fear of failure there's fear I'm gonna get fired there's fear that my peers or friends are gonna think I'm crazy because I want to go take this other job or join this startup or whatever talk about how you think about that how people overcome their fear and jump in with two feet full passion whatever it might be at their journey in life part of my play obviously the college Shuffle and some of the stuff I did early on was there was no point of no return but when I started my first company I tell most people when you want to start a company figure it out while you're still working really hone in on the business plan I talk to credit unions all over the state of Indiana I had 20 weight 28 institutions I'm going to go talk to within two years had 24 of those as customers once I actually started so I built a lot of the framework I'd worked 20 hours a day seven days a week to get it put together everybody thinks an entrepreneur has to jump off a cliff to make it run I jump off a cliff but I have a parachute yep and I have a backdrop so I was pretty damn confident that I can get it done worst case scenario I knew I could get my old job back if I wanted to but more importantly I could go to the guy in Michigan and go to work for him and cut a deal with him to either increase his business in Michigan or take the business outside of the state of Michigan forums I had two or three Escape Valves and I think most real entrepreneurs that are successful have the ability to do that a lot of folks will we see it we do a lot of franchise financing at the bank nowadays and you get a lot of people that think oh can go get a Jimmy John's franchise that's no problem whatsoever well slinging and doing sandwiches and I'll tell you some pain in the ass it's not a life that most people really want to live it can be a very phenomenally successful and very financially rewarding franchise but if that's what you want to do or you have an interest in the area I think I tell everybody go work in that space quit whatever you're doing and you want to be in a restaurant if you want to be a manufacturer you want to do whatever go to work for somebody in that space and instead of see an awful lot of people and I know you've seen this tofu over the years that have business plans that are solutions looking for a problem yeah until find the problem and then create the solution and you're guaranteed every time if you just dream up this crazy idea and you go try and find a customer or a problem to solve with it you're not going to get anywhere so do it from the other side do your research and do your homework know what you're doing enjoy hopefully what you're getting into but have a safety net some Plan B in case plan a doesn't work so how did your first business so what happened did you sell it did that did you merge it back with the other company and then how did you move on to your no I started RDS in 1981 sold it in 2004 spinning out of that again the banker told me when I came up with the idea of Wi-Fi and doing the online integration and presenting banking services over the internet I went to at the time it was Indiana National Bank and said hey I got this idea I'd like to do and they said hey your business is running really well we think that would be bad for you you should not do that so I went to another bank on the money I needed for the equipment got it off the ground and it went absolutely Bonkers and uh that was 1996 sold it in 2001 and we were 20 million in Revenue over 200 employees and just going through the moon most of mine have been longer term businesses I owned Rick's for almost 20 years I'm dying now for 20 years I now had the bank we're coming up on our 25th anniversary next February I'm good at I guess multitasking when I would in the olden days when I'd sell the company I'd start two new ones my wife has convinced me I'm too old for that stuff now but really go in with the idea that this is a long-term shot it's not to people that go in thinking I'm going to make a a million dollars and be out of this in 18 months it burns up for a lot of reasons you really need to have that solid foundation it might be a lifestyle business it could be a Wi-Fi that's a home run hit Way Beyond what I thought it ever would be when I started RDS in 81 I thought if I ever got to a million years a million dollars a year in sales I would just be off the charts I did that in nine months holy and it just went crazy from there and when I sold RDS it was 15 million a year in Revenue by five I said 20 on its way to 40.
one Bridge you name it Rick's when we got rid of Rick's we were doing about 9 million in sales with a four million dollar problem that's amazing wow wait a you had a bottom line at a tax company all of my software companies actually when I launched the bank I worked with Robbie stevens or Robertson Stevens out of the California to raise money for the bank and he took a look at my fight he said my God he said you need to go lose money he said you're making money and I have to Value like a traditional business he said if you were losing money I could get you 100 million dollars overnight and I said I just that's just against my game we'll make money and we'll grow it the old-fashioned way a little bit at a time and thankfully I didn't because the. com bubble burst in 2000 and I'd have been out to dry it would have just imploded on me so yeah that's the focus is make money and reinvest that money in fact the first partner I brought on first year I was in RDS we got to the end of the year he said I own 10 I want 10 of the profits thankfully I did a buy sell agree before we started I said Bill we got to reinvest this in the company I guess nah I want my 10 I said okay here's your 10 and I'm gonna buy you out this this isn't going to work because we need to keep the capital in the company when I sold it 23 years later because my 10 would have been worth about three million bucks I said yeah quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweire CEO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today Erica thanks for being here yeah thanks for having me and you're going to tell us a little bit about this rally Innovation conference that's coming up yep so it's the largest cross-sector Innovation conference in the world we're going to feature six Innovation Studios so think hard tech software Sports Tech again food Healthcare and entrepreneurship's gonna be our catch-all I love that so tell me what is who's it for yeah it's for innovators entrepreneurs investors honestly anybody probably listening to this podcast it's going to be a multi-day thing in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th to the 31st perfect and if people want to find out more information about speakers tickets things like that where can they go yeah so they just go to rallyinnovation.
com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there a little short-sighted yeah so you talk about all these amazing successes up into the right growth but what are some of the hardest parts of growing the business over your 50-year career your what 40 Years of Entrepreneurship that maybe people don't talk about when it comes to entrepreneurship on the bottom line play any good entrepreneurs had failures in their life either in products and services and businesses years ago I did a bar restaurant with L Scott's over at 56th and Emerson with Danny O'Malley and uh Larry wechter two good friends uh here in the city it went crazy for six months hired the wrong manager and blew up in three months and everybody's got failures out there in in the play and you hit obstacles there were times and again as tofta said we were SAS businesses it was all software I had no hard assets Bankers had no idea how in the hell the finance or why would they loan me money because they have no security if I go away they're holding the bag there's nothing they're air ball is the term in the banking world there's nothing out there and there were a lot of times we missed really good opportunities because I just had no means to pull the cash together but rather than give up Equity because back then I saw a lot of folks in the VC world that Cricket speakers was here in Indiana plus back when the CB craze is going nuts in the 70s early 80s and they went from nothing overnight to multi-million dollar company out of VC come in the first time they missed their sales objective they took the company away from the owner and it was done he was out of the business in 90 days I had secondhand experience of watching people that took money to really grow things that the first time they didn't meet a goal or a Target they were pretty much on the street so how to do on that neat how did you overcome so when you started first hearing that bank you you went around the same thing right you started talking to people and you heard no a lot and nobody's ever going to go online for their banking talk about that how did you overcome being told no however many times and what was the and you did your own research right your own market research maybe talk about that experience about watching first internet yeah the kicker in the beginning I launched in April and I actually converted our first customer in May I knew Link Federal Credit Union bill Kirby was a good friend of mine over on the west side of Indianapolis and he understood what technology could do for him he had a plant in Tennessee at the plant here in town and I think there's one in North Carolina it was really hard for him to service him remotely and he didn't have enough size to put a branch at each of those three locations so I showed him with tech how they could do it online they could get access to some of the things and just totally convince him that if he took a chance on me that I'd make him a HomeTown hero and really get his business up to the next level and I did it all betting on the Comm I didn't charge him anything up front I said you run it for 90 days if you like what it's doing then you can pay me and he did it and jumped in he ultimately when I bought my first Main frame computer that probably has less power than my iPhone for half a million dollars he financed it for me and he so much believed in the company and play and then I leveraged him to sell one of his friends and I went back I'd consulted with credit unions all over the state for two or three years so I had really good business relationships in fact the solidarity Credit Union up in Kokomo the I made the presentation when it came time to discuss it the CEO says Dave and I are going to go out in the hallway and the President says what do you mean you're going to go in the hallway he goes I know this guy too well more importantly he knows more about the credit union than I do I don't want to be a part of that conversation he said I need to get out here and I'll go with him but I would tell you if it were my decision I'd hire him now and so it was again that groundwork that I played over two or three years into the reputation I had with the folks and like I said they didn't know and I didn't really know all the mechanics of the computer but I knew the product I could get out the other side would be beneficial to him and give them the tools they really needed to grow seems to me David starting your career on a stingray bicycle I know you're a motorcycle fan now you like Forward Motion both of those Vehicles they move forward and I'm curious when you think about like motorcycles and think about business are there any similarities there oh without question one of my uh mantras that I tell my people all the time is the best defense is a good offense and I'd rather grow myself out of a problem than cut myself out of a problem without question and it's the same thing just the experience of the motorcycles or the bicycles and anything a driven convertibles for 50 years I just I want the wind in my hair when I had hair after five children it's all gone today but yeah it's just that experience of the exhilaration and you when you think about riding a motorcycle a bicycle or even a convertible you your senses are so much more alive and active if you're running down a country road and you smell the hay or you smell the barn or the the cows or whatever it just it changes your whole impression of what you're doing it's not just a car ride it's an experience and that's how I've run my life and I love speed I would have given anything my I was asked by a recruiter at College what would your dream job be and I said I would race sports cars on the weekend and I do photojournalism as I went site to site and it's a combination of both the the business and the competitive side but also a little bit of the art in the the uh the picture side of things and I still play around with cameras today and Dave you would have you would have uh really found your niche in the Instagram influencer economy yeah absolutely yeah the the car Sports Car Racing Page I could see you right now yeah still could I I'd subscribe to your Tick Tock Channel yes I love that over all these successes you've had five amazing companies that have grown really fast you have chosen to headquarter all of them in Indiana and I think that's very commendable I love Indiana we all the podcast is called get in but what do you think Indiana's key differentiator is for growing high-tech companies when I launched first internet Bank we actually did that in New York City and John D Rockefeller is hold off to this on Wall Street we were looking out the window at the bowl and actually a lady from the BBC asked me why Indiana of all places you've got the east coast and the West Coast that's the tech community of the the us and why aren't you there and I said back to the play why I stayed in Indiana and why I do it I said in some respects were viewed as a conservative state so to be the first online institution that bought us some credibility that we're Midwest we're not High Flyers on the coast or Leading Edge not bleeding edge and I said more importantly my number one resource is people and the quality of people I can get out of the Midwest we have a phenomenal universities in play is so much better and a much better price point than I can do on either Coast that and the work ethic quite honestly is considerably better I said we won an ocean and we won mountains two hours on a plane and you got it and I said that my number one resource in getting the company the success of the company is people and I have a much better pool in the midwest than any place else amen great a great point and we spoke you spoke on a panel that I was moderating a couple months ago specifically talking about 68 capital and some of the Investments that you've made in the ecosystem do you mind talking a little bit about that and how you think about now that all of you your business successes built this amazing snowball how you're thinking about continuing that Legacy through how you're investing yeah like you say Kelly Johnson 68 capital is phenomenal she's reaching a very untouched Market that doesn't have a lot of resources and I would argue in Indiana today versus what it was 40 years ago when I started there are tremendous services and programs and and organizations to help out and I would also argue that there's Venture Capital if you have a good solid idea go back to toe vanilla League Ventures and there's tools here today that didn't exist almost every university has some kind of a fund to help folks get things off the ground so if you've got a good idea I'm a heavy investor in all four of the alose funds over the years I've been 68 capital I've done probably 20 direct investments in companies around the Midwest here over the years I'm slowing down as I said earlier about to be 70 years old I'm not worried about buying green bananas but I'm also probably have a little shorter time frame and objective than I've had in the past but I'm still doing a lot of fun things I'm doing some stuff in real estate I'm in Ambrose's fund I'm in the Nickel Plate hotel that's going up next to the bank and Fishers I'm a big part of that I'm doing a lot of still Innovative creative things within the bank I bought a small division three and a half years ago of a bank out of Colorado that had an office in Chicago doing SBA lending today we're the 10th largest SBA lender in the United States so we went from ground zero to we'll do 300 million probably in originations this year I hope it's okay to mention but you were the fastest growing NASDAQ stock for a couple yes one two three years yeah in the early stages and we're getting beat up a little bit right now the again a new Venture we're in is banking as a service and I didn't get in the first wave for a lot of reasons and part of that was quite honest in my tech background I knew there's going to be a lot of flame outs and a lot of issues and it reminded me of in the conversation years and years ago with Scott Jones It's All About eyeballs and you got to get customers and it's all about customers well I remember those days yeah and so now the fintech space it's the same thing they've all been chasing customers which is great but they're all losing massive amounts of money now that we're in some tough Economic Times everybody's saying hey if you need a CD round let's show your path to profitability what's that so we're coming in in what I call fintech 2.
0 and we've got some really good companies doing really good things we'll make a couple announcements in the next month or two that we've been working 18 months again calculated risk we build out the compliance team we got all the things we needed a lot of my peers just jumped in assuming the fintech was going to take care of BSA and kyc and all the federal regulatory stuff the fintechs one they couldn't spell no idea what it was and they weren't doing anything and The Regulators come in and saying oh my God you're doing all this business and nobody's checking anything so we fix that and and we've got some really great opportunities coming up in that space so I'm still doing Innovative creative things within without taking companies outside and I think again I saw in your kind of preview questions the statement of what was my superpower in business over the years and I think my superpower of the last 40 years has been finding phenomenal people and hiring good people and I tell everybody when you find a good person even if you don't have a home hire him you will have a home and when you hire because you need a person you're going to get a warm body you're not really going to get the fit so get the right person at the right time you'll find a home for him and I think that's my success much like we're doing at the bank today in the SBA lending we got out of mortgage lending the gentleman who ran that division for me he's now doing a small business loan product and credit card program so we're able to take people and shift them into new ideas and New Opportunities we go in with proven management proven service skills and it works for everybody speaking of talent so you are you're going as far into your I think this might be correct you're diving into high schools is that right to find interns yeah and so in instead of the old post to job opportunity and hope somebody shows up back to finding great talent talk about that how are you rethinking about Talent acquisition at the bank and how you find your next group of rock stars I tell you that was a really hard program to convince traditional Bankers that you could bring in a student for a 90-day period and actually get anything of value out of a mother then let them make some copies and coffee for you so a little tougher there than it was in the tech world but we had such great success over the years in the tech business we still did it today in fact most of the employees I work for is a Rex and Dino were folks that came in as interns and then ultimately took full-time positions with us last year out of 14 interns we have seven of them working for us now post graduation we get really good students and really good people then we want to hang on we try and find something for them to do when they go back to campus so we're always point of mind they're getting a monthly or bi-weekly check from us we keep that tie there and they don't go talk to recruiters and other people and as I said we the challenges we give and we we can really get a good idea who the Home Run hitters are and we were just good people that are going to do a great job for us and as I again a discussion this morning there's no such thing as a bad internship it's kind of like me and making the decision when it really came down to why I didn't want to do the Coast Guard and you have the internship if you like the experience we have two or three people every year that come in and say this really isn't what I would like to do for a living we've had people actually come back and say hey can I come back and work on HR or could I come back and do customer service next summer and see what we can do learn as I said earlier just absorb everything you can wherever you can but the internship program I would tell everybody get a program together make your management make sure they're doing it right then they're not just giving the students some menial task to do but they're in the 90 days you can do an awful lot of things constantly planting seed nurturing relationships planting seeds with businesses nurturing those businesses a lot of farming rates there and lots of things we can follow up on a future episode of the podcast before we wrap uh this is our favorite part of the show it's the lightning round just two two minutes two minutes long three questions no wrong answers are you down to do the lightning round okay cool here we go David outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for I think students the academics the universities we have we put out a tremendous product the sad part we export more than we retain that's a good answer and I'll say go Tigers our intern is awesome yeah yeah three to two yeah outnumber us yeah yes as long as there's no Wabash guys you can't say that's the only word you can't say on this podcast um we'll bleep it out yeah David what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana I think just the overall quality of life if you take a look at even in Central Indiana the stuff that's around from Parks to Lakes to you name it you can go 20 minutes in any direction have a phenomenal experience with a family on a weekend and there's parts that you can't get out of you can't go two miles in LA in 20 minutes so I think it's just that quality of life and the community that's here in India amen and final question of the lightning round who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things I'd say our buddy John Wexler tofu and I no that guy's runs 900 miles an hour he's got an idea every five minutes is his shoes he just needs to figure out what are the good ideas but I would tell you in the Long Haul John's just got a spirit and an energy about him that he's going to be a phenomenal a phenomenally successful successful individual John's good friend of the show we need to get him on this is a good uh push we need to get him on the show Absolutely David thank you so much for everything that you do for Indiana the Midwest our country and thanks for being on the show today oh I love that guys appreciate it thanks David amen thank you this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or a segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkeg.
com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive Community Check out powdercake. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listened to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at cassid have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at Powder Keg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at casted. us slash powderkeg
