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 Hunker CEO at Powder Keg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher Toph day CEO at Elevate Ventures on the show today is Jason tenenhaus co-founder and executive director at Matchbox Studios and Amanda Finley managing director and acceleration lead at Matchbox Studios you look at obstacles as like opportunities right so you're shipping the water you're trying to get to an island you have a
big iceberg in your way you could be like with me I can't get there there's an iceberg and you hit mental block or you can be like there's an iceberg now I could go left or I could go right I've got options I've got two different directions now Amanda Jason thank you so much for being on the show today yeah right on thanks for having us thanks it's gonna be a blast where is Matchbox Studios uh Lafayette Downtown Lafayette Indiana downtown Lafayette Indiana I knew that that answer but I wanted to hear directly from you you know what I just heard recently which is that
Lafayette is the number one best city in America for first-time jobs for college students oh yeah yeah it's pretty amazing that's awesome that's a good statistic a lot of groundwork laid by Matchbox here what year did Matchbox start 2014 is when it opened its doors I remember that I remember that because we we were running Verge meetups out of a church on campus prior to Matchbox and then Matchbox became the permanent home for a Verge a lot greater Lafayette that's right yeah so Toph and I are both from West Lafayette for those in the show who are maybe this is your first episode I know
we have a lot of uh multiple time listeners so we understand Matt and his friends burn down our barn at our high school that's all I want to say oh but but that's what you're supposed to do I mean friendly rivalry they do it every year we only spray painted it but I believe someone eventually burned it there might have been some history there yeah yeah maybe well statute of limitations has run out there certainly was not the Innovation community that there is today when I was growing up in West Lafayette and I'm so grateful that exists today and today I would love to just
talk a little bit about how that came to be but also some of just your own personal backgrounds because you brought a lot of really interesting experiences to what you built at Matchbox and what you built in The Innovation Community there Jason you mind just telling us a little bit about yourself and how you made your way into the crazy world of innovation in the midwest yeah it just backed into it is the best way to describe it I've never wanted to be an entrepreneur I don't necessarily love the label even of entrepreneur to in my mind why is that I I don't know it
comes with a lot of expectations and things these days and I've also never built a thing to have a thing right so I don't consider myself really an entrepreneur to me it's more you see an area of low yield or problem or something that's sub-optimal of the week should be and feels like it's just not working as well as it should and I want to fix that thing it just feels like a problem that needs fixed right no different than walking around and seeing somebody missing the trash can and throwing trash on the ground and you want to pick it up but if you want
to keep it picked up so to speak in a sustainable way you have to build a business model around that so it can continue to be fixed and that's what other people call entrepreneurship but to me it's more about problem solving or trying to just improve things around me your first business was that gray house I'd started I've been hustling since high school actually you know what my very first business I don't know if I don't know if I've told you this story but I'm so excited when I was an undergrad at Purdue the Women's Basketball team won the National Championship I remember that remember
that the Visas were on that team yeah yeah and they just people the campus went crazy everybody ran out of their apartments and they were rioting in the streets and lighting couches on fire and everything else and I participated for 20 minutes and then I ran to Walmart and I bought a bunch of t-shirts and iron-ons and I made shirts that said I ride it in the streets when the women's basketball pretty Women's Basketball team won the National Championship oh wow and I made a couple thousand dollars worth of shirt sales that evening before that's awesome that's so good one of my first that's an
entrepreneur it just seemed like an opportunity do you still have one of those shirts I'm white somewhere I don't know for sure I think we might need to see if there's one on eBay yeah we could do a reprint yeah I was definitely like still in grade school so I didn't ride in the streets but I would still like a t-shirt I'd like to tell people I did yeah yeah maybe I was in junior high I definitely had tickets I went to a lot of those games yeah they were great they were great last year so it was fun yeah how about you Amanda how
did what was like your early career I know you had a journalism major were you was Innovation and ecosystem building on your radar at all no what an accident no I I my high school calculus teacher suggested a public relations degree for me which means I wasn't very good at calculus I think so journalism and PR and I decided pretty early that I wanted to go the non-profit route that meant something to me and that was important to me but it started in women's health a relocation to Lafayette landed me in the Purdue Research Park and then I was surrounded by it and it was
too late where was the relocation from just I worked in Greensburg Indiana but I grew up southeast of Indianapolis got it yeah how did you two meet that's interesting stories I worked in with entrepreneurs in The Innovation kind of area the edge of campus post-graduation and a man was working with a Foundry at the time and so we'd see each other at events and things like that I think in retrospect but I ended up working with a lot of first-time entrepreneurs that were how do I say this they I began work with them and at some point they would end up working with the university
and I would lose touch with them and found out years later after we got an opportunity to connect that Amanda was the man on the inside at Purdue that was turning those things into something else and I knew that was happening somewhere by someone but I didn't know who and then we found out later we'd worked with a lot of the same startups over the years yeah it was privy to it I think one day we were looking at like logos we've each designed for startups and we're like we both worked on that one and they brought me your draft and told me when I
get better he's a much better designer I love that yeah how did what was your background in design Jason because I remember a lot of the early stuff that you worked on yeah just so cool yeah so you know I graduated with industrial design degree and went into the toy industry so I this was in like the boy 2000s early 2000s and I worked on a bunch of different products for a few different companies but things like you might recognize like vacman the Illuminator glow in the dark football I did a bunch of toys you worked on the illuminators so that's what I wanted to
have happen you gotta lead with that you know the illuminators of course okay I'll tell you quick am I the outcast if I don't know the illuminators that's just a Nerf football that has lights in it right you know it was just that here's the thing about the aluminum memory a funny story I designed the Illuminator and it was I worked in r d in charge of new product Concepts so I was the guy with a blank piece of paper at the start of a 250 person 12 month cycle for all of the product that was put out and so it's very high volume in
ideation a couple hundred ideas a day probably wow and so one of those was the Illuminator and I thought it was cool when everybody loved they got super fast track through production and we sold a ton of them and I never really played with one I just designed it because I thought it sounded cool years later I had one and I went back to college back to Purdue and I got together with a bunch of buddies went to school with and we decided to play night football with this thing terrible product guys terrible you can't see anything except the glowing football flying around of course
everyone's diving at the glowing football and you're getting clotheslined in the dark you have no idea it was not fun to play with and I felt terrible to selling so many others hysterical but um so I did that but then I did a bunch of toys for a movie so I did the toys for the Godzilla with Matthew Broderick I did the whole toy line for that oh cool Independence Day with Will Smith there's aliens by the way were the first product with a um live a microchip on the shelves that would activate when you walked by where the heads would open and they would
scream at you right I remember now you walk through the aisle and it's like everything's talking to you right so I'm sorry about that but that was the first one in Penn State The Iron Giant and the Mars Attacks ray guns and a bunch of 2000s Maybe that's so cool that's what I did early on in my career I think those are the 90s movies I think sometimes I forget that there's a 10 years yeah I'm sorry let's just pretend these are like my core memories I remember playing with those Independence Day action figures totally totally I never had any of the cool stuff because
we didn't have a ton of money for toys and stuff but all my friends oh he has the Illuminator let's make sure we invite Gary and you got to see them on the shelves right absolutely I totally walked by those hundreds of ideas a day yeah how do you come up with hundreds of ideas a day I don't know in retrospect what's the secret I'm just kidding I just know that he still does it there's just not like toys on the other side now now it's just me frantically scribbling down notes and thinking like oh my God are we gonna do all this 200 new
things when he stands up during a meeting and grabs a whiteboard marker I'm like crap oh here it goes my next three months it's a good question man there's a lot of techniques on it sometimes do lectures on this even and we're not going to win all I hear on this podcast but the simplest way to explain it I think is you look at obstacles as like opportunities right so you're shipping the water you're trying to get to an island you have a big iceberg in your way you could be like woe is me I can't get there there's an iceberg and you hit mental
block or you can be like there's an iceberg now I could go left or I could go right I've got options I've got two different directions now so obstacles or opportunities with the right kind of energy with the right kind of optimism it keeps you from hitting block I think yeah one of the things that stands out to me is that you've got this duality of like idea guy and like person who's like harnessing that and trying to figure out how to channel the best of the ideas and actually make stuff happen is that something that you see in a lot of the startups that
you work with like hopefully that there's the idea more of an idea of person and then like more of an operator type person I'm very grateful for the opportunity to work with Amanda and I think there are two skill sets really do complement one another and have built Matchbox and what it is but it doesn't always look like the way you're describing it I mean I think you're being nice it's okay it does I think a lot of times you'll throw the wacky thing up initially and maybe maybe my my my voice gets in there eventually I don't think any I don't you're not taking
all the credit for the things it's okay yeah well but but here's very conscientious about this I think he's I think that's probably made we've worked together for a while we also have a third person on our team Julianna casavan who I've worked with in various capacities for the last 15 years and she I think she evens that out in even like further ways because she's very like action oriented and let's lay out the next steps for the listeners describe real quick what Matchbox does like what would be a typical if it isn't typical maybe or is not typical but but what does kind of
Matchbox do high level yeah so it start it started as a co-working studio nine years ago we just celebrated our ninth birthday I didn't join the team until they'd been open for a year so I let you guys like put together all the furniture and do all the construction stuff and then I just strolled in Whistling build the Ikea desk yeah and just started building community so you you did all the hard stuff you laid all the groundwork and I just got to come in and do the fun things but initially for the first five years maybe a little bit longer it was a co-working
studio it was just a space for people to work these days it is a co-working space where we're working hard build community and give people connectivity and those sorts of things an acceleration studio with the suite of acceleration courses that we're running for for different kinds of Founders and a Makerspace um and then where is it it's in Lafayette or West Lafayette Indiana yeah downtown Lafayette right between the hotel there's only one downtown in the library yeah I spent a lot of time in that Library going on it's a good Library yeah Public Library that's right and that that cool like Crown historic gas stations
right out front which is the first thing that I fell in love with when I moved to Lafayette and I was like look at this little gem and now I get to work like right behind it every day it's pretty cool where do the entrepreneurs come from they come from Purdue do they come from other cities do they move in for three months and in Parachute back out do they come and stay all those things all those things yeah we our youngest member I think is 17 our oldest is I think 84 or something they're all over the place right what's that guy doing amaze
and some cool stuff actually yeah and both of them are doing pretty cool stuff cooler almost than the average person sometimes but also it is uh all different sectors last time we measured there were 19 different sectors measured and the biggest one by far was other right so they're all over the place in stage and background they come from Purdue about half come from the um west side of the river and have come from the east side of the river but sometimes campus sometimes the community industry Moonlighting day jobs surrounding communities too yeah we cast a wide net and we love that we love somebody
sitting at the coffee bar who's doing their first startup ever and somebody who's post raise who's just now execution phase and Outsourcing their sales team and they're hanging out having coffee even talking about things there's some really neat things that are able to come when you mix everybody like that together absolutely and I I do want to bring it back to this idea guy concept because I feel like I have talked to so many startups where it's like clear that they're and it doesn't have to be a guy right it's just that's the trophy phrase but the idea of person at a startup almost like
has to have this counterbalance and I've experienced and worked with startups that didn't have the counterbalance and the best metaphor I ever heard about this is like the idea person is like the kite but like the balancing like operator is a string like a kite doesn't get any lift if you don't have a string to like move it in a direction and find the wind and I've seen so many startups that are just like the kite like trying to yeah do something but they're moving in all the different directions and can't actually get lift off and that's what I was going to say I'm going
to go too I it to me it's not quite as straightforward as like ideas and execution and I think yes Amanda is as excellent those things and runs a whole team that's excellent those things but the thing that I think is Mo has been most valuable is the catching wind is about people so it's not just like Jason has some crazy idea and then walks out of the room and says go do that right it's not like that it's here's the concept and here's like the goal of what we're trying to accomplish but it doesn't mean anything even well executed doesn't mean anything until you
engage with like humans and culture and community and relationships and you build this whole like Rich fabric that executes as it goes and the idea rarely ends up being similar to the original ideas just enough to get going and people like Amanda come along and like connect with people and help them feel like heard and seen and welcomed into the community the catching wind at Matchbox has always been about building life around the ideas and that's what I really think has been most valuable I do like the humans yeah the human parts what were some of those things you did in that first year that
you were there Amanda because that's so important those first couple of years of any co-working or innovation space any Community to get that to actually take off takes a lot this is can I just be really honest yeah I think I probably heard it before okay except Matchbox has three co-founders Jason worked with Dennis Carson the city of Lafayette and Michael Berger who's at Del Mar and is now at Little Engine Ventures but I came in and it's these three guys and they're like here's 12 000 square foot and 100 people and that's where we keep the dishwasher tabs and I was like and I'd
only lived in Lafayette I think at that point for maybe five years so I was still getting like I was still building my personal community in that area and I think our membership doubled by the end of the first year and I think people is my wheelhouse people is my wheelhouse that's a bad sentence but maybe my new catchphrase I like it building Community was easy for me and I think after the first year you guys were like good job you these I think people feel connected they feel like they know each other they're finding the resources that they need amongst themselves with a little
bit of like support and facilitation and I was like thank you guys so much and then in year two they were like all right now we've got these like other projects that we want to do and they're like you have to stop talking to the people and I mean I can't I think my second performance review they were like you're you're talking too much you're not turning in enough work and so I think we've slowly had to figure out how to do both because also as the membership grew one person one person trying to connect a few hundred people is impossible I can't I can't
stay connected to all of these people so now we have a team and they're all part of this community and getting to know what our members are good at and what they need and what they're looking for and like on a startup level but like all the way down to like they need a dog sitter like we're I think we're who do you spend more time work with than the people you work with like no one that's like our core communities as adult human beings I've been in weddings I've house that a dog set I've babysat it's just a cool community and I think people
feel welcome there digging in and relating with people on a personal level yeah and after they'll tell me about those things they'll tell me about their big Ideas they'll tell me about the business they've always wanted to start and then I can say what are you waiting for let's do that oh that's cool yeah are you all familiar with dunbar's number that that phrase I think you told me about that I think you've taught me this tell us tell us about dunbar's number do you think that was a real thing with matchbox as you were scaling it oh yeah for sure yeah I think so
and even now the number's 150 right uh boy I can't remember I think so yeah yeah I think I think so are you familiar with Denver do you want to explain it you probably explain it better than me I mean you just go through different phases the way that plays out in Matchbox I'll say is we have days when you walk in and the whole place feels a library and nobody's like comfortable talking and connecting with one another and then you hit you have few more people in the space and you hit something like I don't know maybe a coffee shop right where it's you're
comfortable talking and connecting and it just your social contract changes without even thinking about it and then you hit we've got another number right you've got a certain number of people in and it's I don't know maybe a concert or a basketball game or something and then some people are starting to self-select out they're stealing away to the corners and finding quiet places to work so the vibe in the place changes as you go through each of these different densities in the space and dunbars I think is in reference to it's not necessarily those that are like present physically it is just like operationally how
you grow through different stages and that's been true for us too so how we operate and run and manage we we try to have no rules or or very few rules no signs in the space we have so many rules that's so I'm the muscle I think I'm the mean parent yeah I mean it's the heavy yeah why like a no signs rule where like we ask occasionally but I don't want a bunch of like here's go here and don't do this and do this because the people in the space are the ones that are really driving the culture and it's not like a top-down
thing and so early on like how do we organize a community like this you manage the different growing sizes that we have but still give them autonomy and make it feel like it's their space and so instead of a rule book originally we just had a Manifesto and the manifesto had 20 25 different things and if you adhered to the mores of the manifesto you would fit into the culture and that way it doesn't have to be like number one at the time when I first wrote it was don't be a jerk and in parentheses it was like I think we all know what that
looks like and like that covers like 80 of the problems yeah do you remember that I rewrote that rule yeah do you remember why no I don't remember why some people didn't know what that because some people don't know what that means I don't think we can assume that everyone knows what it means to not be a jerk and not in any kind of like harsh way but a lot of people who are co-working are doing it for first time and if you haven't shared an office with people in that capacity I saw people doing things that felt a little jerkish but they were not
meaning to like their intentions were good but they've never taken a conference call in the middle of a like concrete and glass garage before so all of a sudden like sound is bouncing and I don't want that person to feel bad for misstepping yep no that's true it's and don't be a jerk Amanda will tell you what this looks like how you rewrote it no not at all not at all it's shared be kind just be mindful be kind yeah and and so like that's the whole idea of how we've always tried to manage the community there and there has to be some rules and
some bookends and all of that of course but we don't want to feel like that in the space when people feel some ownership and the community has taken Ebbs and flows over the years we have to let it be that 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 Ag and food Healthcare and Entrepreneurship is going to 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 that's multi-day in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th through 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
Rally innovation com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I'll love it you heard it here rallyinnovation.com we'll see you there Matchbox has been at it for 10 years almost roughly right don't round up you'll take all the wind out of the 10-year anniversary it's gonna be a party yeah are you going to come hell yeah come on am I invited I want to come yeah awesome let's get a bus we get the coolest back to the moment I love it do a tour while you're there to stay for a week absolutely done deal let's do it you can sleep at
the co-working airbnbs in Buck Creek maybe not so I'm curious so from what kind of shifts or Trends have you seen people coming into the space What kinds of things are they I know you've got all kinds of sectors that people are doing but are there any high level Trends and shifts in what people are focused on with what they want to start up but you know and then also from an individual side like any Trends in what people are fearful of or like what really keeps them up like any what kind of shifts have you seen one thing that's been consistent that comes to
mind is whenever the the job marketer the economy drops down a bit entrepreneurship always goes up a bit and that's always been really good for us when business is going really well we get a lot of remote workers and they're part of our community when the business Community isn't providing a lot then we get a lot of entrepreneurs trying to start new things or side hustles that's been a consistent trend for us at least where are we right now in terms of what you're seeing on the ground oh man pretty well I feel like we're pretty balanced right now we the an in a post
2020 World a lot of our members stayed employed they were already working remotely the remote workers were there they continued operationally as normal and they stuck around but I think right now I think we're seeing a lot more small business entrepreneurship in Lafayette than we have before when you say small business you mean a look like a trampoline park or something what something like that that sounds fun if you come back up maybe you guys can start another trampoline park uh some of that yeah uh single operator uh some brick and mortar stuff our main streets getting like some revitalization stuff happening and uh we're
definitely seeing that we're also seeing that in our surrounding counties too and we've been able to work with those entrepreneurs a little bit more in the last year too you know I would say you know the team that we pulled together are people that are highly skilled highly experienced capable of making a big impact out there in that for profit sector but they are people that have hearts to make a difference in the community and you put a group of people like that together and you work together for enough years you just start evolving into impact right and so we built all these little programs
we've got all these little things and some of them are on purpose and some of them are just because the two the team is and and they're trying to support the entrepreneurs that maybe are a little disenfranchised or don't have as quite as good of an opportunity has evolved into a lot of what we do these days and it's really rewarding to see and it's really interesting a piece of it yes the high-tech stuff still happens in the high growth Innovation things are always there in the in the Woodwork but but that's been neat to see that Evolution over the years and I think it
takes all those types of businesses to make an ecosystem go 100 I don't feel that Dan Hanahan the LinkedIn post it just like really hit me hard and this is probably six months ago or so founder of sixster and now Hollister yeah in the post was I'm gonna paraphrase but it was basically like why do we tech people go start these businesses that are so hard to take so much money it's so competitive and we have all these fancy acronyms for metrics and you're like look it's just stressful right and like why don't we go start good old solid businesses that drive margin in a
cash flow and I'm like that's actually a really good question yeah we're solving problems with the tools you have though right like right just like if you're back to the Salt the problem-solving narrative yeah I've got a I've got a friend who's very wealthy I talk to him all the time about investing in businesses he's like why would I invest in a business when I can just buy land yeah it's just so much easier for me and I've almost guaranteed appreciate an asset off of Lane I'm just gonna keep buying land yeah it's a good argument yeah boring though yeah boring is sometimes really fun
you're right well tell me a little bit more about those kind of scaling years as you get in you're building the community at Matchbox you're starting to see some companies take off maybe starting to see some companies fail and fold how do you manage that kind of change where you start to see these graduations of different members and maybe some move maybe new people are moving in a lot can happen in those early years of a ecosystem yeah so maybe I if it's okay if I answer a bit philosophically and then please share your piece there right I Was A Boy Scout when I was
little just for a couple years yeah and I learned a thing I think about all the time and someone taught me how to build a fire and the way they explained it to me was think of the fire as like a mouth and the Flames was like tongues and wherever the biggest tongues are is where you want to put the wood put the food you just keep feeding the tongues that are sticking up and that's gross I'm never gonna look at a fire the same way that sounded gross this is like a formative memory in my life yeah I love it so yeah we that's
how I've always learned I think about all the time so this is no different than like the pivots of a startup right and we think of matchbox as a startup still and we try to make pivots we try to experiment everything is an experiment right nothing is a long-term program and and so yes it has been a continuous process of trying to look at where those opportunities are and they're not always obvious they're not always things that we thought and we have pivoted a bunch over the years so that's what were some of the bigger town songs that you fed Progressive you gotta be on
record feeding the tongues Amanda I know I'm gonna make a baby bird it's not fire anymore it's baby birds it's so much better you gotta feed the bigger baby birds it doesn't seem very nice now I'm worried about the little baby birds I'd like to hear your thoughts on this too but I like one of those for example that comes to mind is is like I was saying there was a focus on high tech initially exclusively right because that's where there's a lot of opportunity and also there were existing resources in the committee for small business and we focus there but then we started looking
at all of these other needs that were around us and thought a lot of the advice in the early stages translates there's a lot of overlap in those two worlds in the early stages so we started exploring those kind of things that was a pivot for us we didn't like Amanda said we didn't have an accelerated at all when we first opened our doors we would just coach people one off that came to us until we had to build a system to solve that that was another interesting one we didn't expect I think overall the impact has been bigger than I'll admit bigger than I
thought it would be and so that also in its own way has been a pivot the size and longevity of what we've done it's not what we were expecting yeah I think all of our early members all of our for like First Community folks some of them are still around which is the coolest I love that they're the ogs but they came from like your personal networks the co-founders personal networks and there was a lot of there was a lot of tech in that group initially a lot of software and a lot of tech and it did need to be rounded out but I think
rounding it out is what I needed a little bit more totally yeah I remember the mayor asked me when we right before we opened our doors how many people would we have at the end of the first year and I said 25 because I knew 25 people that I could call and get to come there if I had these so I was sandbagging at 25 of course but it ended up being over 100 that first year and it's just 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 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 at 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 what are some of your favorite like what are some of the success
stories of pop out you're like or things you never expected yeah I like can I talk about Nishant is that okay I like to talk about Sean because he taught me to never tell someone that their idea is bad so he was a he was an undergrad student and he was coming to like startup weekends and meetups and things and sometimes you see an undergrad and they've caught it and you don't know what it's going to be like what the thing that they like stick with is gonna be but it's gonna be something like they'll get to it eventually he was that he like won
two startup weekends he was like at every Verge event he was just like he was in it and I was sitting at the coffee bar one day and he was like I have this idea for a machine that does your laundry for you because laundry sucks and I was like you're wrong Audrey doesn't suck laundry smells good and it's warm it's the best chore I was wrong so Nishant built presso and now it's this fully automated vending machine for dry cleaning and he's like crushing it in the live entertainment industry and like theaters can't get enough of these things because they have multiple shows a
day and costumes that to be cleaned between shows so that yeah and I know he's in other markets now but I don't think I've heard of presso so what does espresso do it's like a vending machine sized system and it's the dry cleaning fully automated dry cleaning folding and everything so it washes dries it's not going to fold for you it's going to come out on the hanger you put it in on that would be cool though oh I got you that's really it's not like watching full it's like dry cleaning yeah I gotta get my suit ready for yeah so his first prototype he
built or maybe it was a set uh first or second prototype was built in our maker space and it was like mostly zip ties this thing was mostly zip ties in an old server rack and a couple blow dryers yeah we spent hours like he'd never use the electric drill before yeah and uh we bought him that Surfer rack matchbox for him to build his first prototype and like he has hours with this guy and we just thought this never would have guessed right what happened yeah that is awesome he did such a good job though like he wheeled this giant thing into like office
lobbies and gems and did product testing and talked to his customers like he did all the things because he had that he had the bug that's the one thing I've learned from community building is it's like I'm pretty bad at picking the horse oh yeah but it's all about the jockey it is so it's true it's just it's not about the business is this person gonna figure something out yeah I think winner I think a lot of times people think I should be an entrepreneur you've got to be a mathematician or this that and the other and there's multiple Studies have been done but the
two words that keep coming up are just simple grit and creativity so true right it and everybody reads the headlines of some massive success and the backstory never gets talked about right the just the road of failures and and those White Knuckle moments and the zip ties right it's amazing in train grit or creativity is that something that you do in your accelerator I think you can foster it you know what I mean like I think it can be buried but someone can have it they probably either have it or they don't but I think it can be buried maybe maybe they don't know they
have it to your point right or not being encouraged to yeah to act on it yes no one set their tongues on fire and working initially in my career in like a highly like a high volume creative space I do think you can teach creativity like I am a firm believer in being able to teach just about anybody who cares to work at it creativity just like you teach them how to shoot basketballs right tell me tell me how that is with creativity because I know how to train someone to shoot a basketball but I don't think I know how to train someone it's just
a creative it's a lot of things right you take reps like you literally have to take reps at it and like practice right what would a rep look like I used to do exercises where I would like I'd ride the I'd ride the train in the morning and so I'd have a white piece of paper or pad in front of me and I would just look up and whatever my eyes fell on out the window I would build a product based on that and I'd give myself like two minutes to come up with the idea and sketch it out flip to the next page look
down look up whatever might as well and do it again and again on the way to work wow or watching TV I'd sit down turn it on I give myself like 30 seconds to come up with an idea whenever what was happening on that channel give myself two minutes to build it next Channel and I'd go until I got around to the first channel and I didn't have very much TV at the time so it didn't take me that long and um no I'm like remember channels yeah and then I was like worn out and so that's Reps for example there's a lot of techniques
like I said I use probably a dozen different like actual techniques there's some pretty crazy ones out there let's hear the crazy yeah do you want to set up a meeting to design your course on teaching creativity yeah I'll sign up I'll help you design it and then thanks that'd be great one of the one of the craziest ones was there's and this isn't mine this was someone else that used to do this but this this designer would push his lounge chair onto his wooden floor of his kitchen and grab a spoon in his hand and sit in that chair until he fell asleep and
when he fell asleep his hand would loosen drop the spoon Hit the Floor wake him up and he would immediately come up with some idea that was on the top of his mind and he'd fall back asleep grab a spoon same thing again again and what he was doing was accessing these Alpha Waves where you're half awake and half asleep and you're less inhibited by preconceptions of how to do something you sit down design a product that you're first hundred ideas are going to be all the obvious things that everybody else is going to think of and you can't avoid that you have to I
had a friend that used to call it on knocking that stuff off the front of the Shelf you got to draw them out and push them to the side and draw them out and push them to the side and get all the get 100 of them out of the way and you finally it's getting hard and that's where it gets good and you've gotten to the back of the Shelf through all the junk you know and so it takes that kind of discipline this I I so this is like I just got chills because so I will lay in bed at night in in my
brain I feel like I'm not actually fully conscious but I'm definitely thinking in these thoughtful come up and then I will start building something some crazy idea and it's brilliant the problem is sometimes I wake up in the morning I'm like that was dumb but but to get into actually just writing it down right there because it's some of the stuff that we're involved in now and that's awesome so it's like a real thing where these Alpha Waves I'd never heard that term maybe our alarm clocks should have a little recording button on them yeah I think that's a great idea I definitely do that
I try to record my dreams and I do dream analysis it's really tapping into the unconscious or the subconscious yeah yeah there's a startup emerging right yeah absolutely yeah decoder shout out to Dakota everything here to talk about that at some point but it's fascinating just the parallels between what that exercise that you're talking about there's like almost an exact parallel in songwriting which is a hobby I kind of picked up during the pandemic I always did it when I was a kid but I fed the flame a little bit during the pandemic and Jeff Tweedy from Wilco wrote an amazing book how to write
one song and most of his exercises are very similar to what you said but just for songwriting so just this idea of hey just play some chords and like Mumble some stuff see if some words come out and just allowing your brain to relax and like doing those processes is really fascinating just the parallels between writing a good song or writing a bad song Sorry which there's like a famous quote like how do you write a good song It's a thousand bad ones yeah right on it's what you're saying on the ideation front is you're just putting in reps and maybe one of those things
ends up being great maybe you want to hear ideas as you're falling asleep and you jack down becomes the thing before he wrote that book though how much time did you spend wondering what an American Aquarium Drinker is that's a great question amazing curious amazing you know on the wall of Matchbox we have a quote and it is rather than no because yes if and this was it's quoted by oh I forget his name right now his nickname was Buzz he was one of the 12 of the 12 men of Disney and Buzz lightyears named after him actually I can't remember his real name though
and rather than no because yes if and to me what that means is you can listen to a pitch and you can think ah no way that's gonna work because of this and this and this where you can hear a pitch you can put in exactly the same amount of energy and instead you can say yes that's an amazing idea if only you were to do this and this and the only difference is you're choosing awesome improv right it's that's so 100 true I was just up in Calgary and the keynote speaker was talking about that concept and he actually did it live in the
audience with some just random idea they would start with and he'd say okay now you're going to say no and because no because it'll just go down this nasty dark hole whatever and then just some other random idea and it was okay now you're going to be yes if yeah and just the paradigm shift you could just see it happening in real time it was insane that's awesome that's going on our wall that's great I love that and we have a can of spray paint so you can do it right now all right yeah let's do it yeah and that's where there's two worlds like
connect right that we were just talking about there's this creative taking reps trying things and it's very akin to that space when you're starting something where you feel blind and you don't know if you're blind because you're on your way to the dark or you're blind because you're on your way to the light you're just blind in that moment and so being able to hang in there thinking yes if let's keep working let's keep hanging in there and that's ultimately where I think a community can be really valuable are you laugh you know my ancient Greek philosophy no I've just been I've been the person
in the room where you're like let's it's we're not giving up yet and I'm like ah it's impossible and I just think and and in general for Creative communities or Innovative communities like this is why it's valuable because when you're there in the dark it's so easy to give up on those hard days and you have a lot more hard days than good days let's be honest I've never done the math but it's got to be sometimes the same day yeah don't do the math is the same day and so when you're with other people that are in that same stage and they're also in
the dark they can it's basically just a hang in there just hang in there a little bit longer right take some more reps I'll help you out right let's go have some coffee let's go for a walk let's take some more reps together and that's why communities create fertile opportunities for Innovation and that's not true for individual spaces like Matchbox or like any other co-working is true for the state as we help each other with those things I just looked at the time and it has flown by we only have time left for the lightning round no way will you both do the lightning round
I don't know what it is but I guess we'll give it a shot all right it's only three yes yes it's only three questions you want to do leave the like you got it baby you got it all right so it's three three questions there are no wrong answers first thing that comes to your mind we're gonna treat this as a creativity exercise Amanda you're gonna go first on this first question outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for oh kindness great answer yeah Jason yeah I would say something really similar it's a place where if you ask somebody for some help
or advice you almost always will get it and that is more rare than people in the midwest realize next question you're gonna go first on this one Jason what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana oh my gosh uh oh I would say this the stick-to-itiveness right this attitude I think of like we were just talking about giving it a shot it doesn't get enough credit but I think it's really valuable I love that is there a place or a location or a store or something that you like to do or was just blown away by in Indiana man geez there's all kinds of cool stuff
I would say some of the towns that are going through transition right so some place like Valpo or where it's like starting to get cool and cultural and there's like stuff it just doesn't feel like Indiana I love going to those little spots and exploring heck yeah me too great one and what about you Amanda the first thing I thought of I have a sister who lives in Chesterton and I love that's like not a part of the state I spent a lot of time in growing up in Indiana is that technically the region I think so yeah it's just you're basically you got like
Beach Town siding up there and you remember a place called The Spa old school my great like great uncle or something used to own this thing called the spa another story I think my brother-in-law has talked about that place we grew up in Chesterton yeah yeah I wanted to hear about this place okay this one to you Amanda yeah who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things oh that's a hard one wait a you first no that's not the rules gotta play by the rules oh I hate rules no wrong answers yeah I don't think I'm
not gonna name a person I'm gonna I'm gonna cop out of this one and not name a person I think what I'm getting to do uh this year specifically is like I've been in matchbox for eight years and I've been able to get into the region like the greater Lafayette region over the last year and there so there are more people doing cool things that we need to keep on radar than there are not right about it yeah just drive 30 minutes in any direction you'll find people yeah and I guess I actually was thinking something similar but I would say um some of the
underserved groups I think are slowly starting to get a little bit more attention and a little bit more support and it could be socioeconomically or gender or race or whatever it might be and it's slow but Indiana does feel like it's trying and it's exciting to see some of that stuff happening those I think would are the people to watch they've always been brilliant and always been capable but the risk feels too high because of social cultural pressures to be an entrepreneur and if we create an environment that gives them that safety then I think we're going to see a lot of new growth come
totally agree so much untapped potential thank you both so much for coming Sharon it's amazing we're gonna have to have you back and have part two of this because there's so much more to uncover and maybe maybe we do a road trip on season I like it too fun that'd be great bring your lights bring your big lights appreciate it 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 casted 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
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