Julie Heath grew up in the San Francisco Bay area during the tech boom of the 80s and 90s, and spent over a decade of her career on the East Coast. Despite her cross-country experiences, she proudly calls Indianapolis home and is dedicated to making Indiana even more supportive for entrepreneurs. As the VP of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems at the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), Julie has a rich background that includes innovating at The Smithsonian and transitioning into the private sector. She was one of the first full-time employees at Boardable, an Indianapolis-based software company and long-time Powderkeg Community member, and later became the Executive Director at The Speak Easy, Indiana’s first collaborative workspace.
In our conversation with Julie, we explore her journey from the public sector to the private sector, and her ongoing efforts to support entrepreneurs in Indiana through her role at IEDC. Julie shares actionable tips for transitioning your career into tech, and highlights what the state of Indiana is doing to support entrepreneurs and small businesses. She provides insights into how Indiana's entrepreneurial community compares to other regions, including Silicon Valley. This episode is filled with practical advice on building meaningful professional relationships and showcases Indiana's commitment to fostering a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. Join us to learn from Julie's experiences and gain inspiration from her dedication to supporting innovation in the heartland.
Transcript
Full episode transcript
from the crossroads of America in Indianapolis Indiana this is get in the show focused on the unfolding stories and most extraordinary Innovations happening in the Heartland today today's guest is Julie Heath who is the VP of entrepreneurial ecosystems for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation or iedc we may hear us saying iedc on the show today moving to Indiana what what do I need to know you don't want to be my only friend how do I how do I fix that he told me to join the Speakeasy and I thought I'm joining a bar I like Indiana already she focuses on removing barriers to entrepreneurship by creating a shared economy of supportive connections accessible resources and know-how prior to that she was the executive director at the Speakeasy a 501c3 non-profit in Indiana's first collaborative workspace the Speakeasy helped lower barriers to entry and continues to do it is still very much a Vibrant Community it has lowered the barrier of Entry to entrepreneurship through community building and a shared economy of knowledge social capital and affordable space prior to that she was a VP of customer success at portable a long time Powder Keg member after transitioning from a career in the museum and art sector she holds a bachelor's degree from UC Davis in studio art and economics as well as a master's degree in painting from the University of New Hampshire we're so excited to have her on the show today Julie thanks so much for being here yeah thank you for having me we're pumped I'm totally stoked Julie is like a total rock star in the Indiana entrepreneurial ecosystem at ABC I'm super excited to hear about her background me too me too and I will actually add also Superstar nationally have been able to plug into some of the events that you've hosted Julie and seen some of the people that you've pulled from around the country to be here in Indiana people building ecosystems around the country so I'm excited to talk about all of that today me too all right let's dive in I'd love to start just early on I know that you grew up in the Bay Area San Francisco area tell me a little bit about that what was I like yeah growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area was fantastic it's I think it was the beneficiary of Silicon Valley and everything that happened in terms of Entrepreneurship and wealth creation in the 1980s 1990s I think one really important ingredient that is left out of the Silicon Valley story is the cost of living of the Bay Area in the 80s so in the early 80s your entry-level librarian your entry level firefighter could still buy a house and have a 10 minute commute to work yep for some reason we have lost that piece of the puzzle in telling why the Silicon Valley is a Silicon Valley and yet we still have that here in Indiana a lot of Indiana is at a cost of living where you can still have your entry level public service affording to buy a house and have a 10-minute commute to work which also helps entrepreneurs especially in terms of their Runway and the process of affording starting a company do you have some early memories of kind of that childhood and brushing up against the tech industry yeah probably was most obvious in high school I feel like all of my classmates were headed to either UC Berkeley or Stanford that seemed to be the big debate and most of their parents were in Tech or had started companies and so it was just in in the culture it was absolutely ingrained in the day-to-day were your parents in Tech no mine were of the public servant righty meaning my father was a captain of the Oakland fire department which is how I know about how public servants were able to afford houses in the early 80s in the Bay Area and it it seems to me critical because you need to be able to have a healthy Society with all its contributors in order to have a healthy ecosystem so I think it's I think cost of living and how it affects different people in our society is an important part of this topic so in when you were in the household then when did you first hear of this idea called entrepreneurship like in in high school did your friends talk about it or when you went to visit their homes did their parents talk about tech how did you start thinking about those things or did you I you know what I don't think I did it was there it just seemed it was always there I don't remember learning about it because I remember the the the Netscape era and IPOs and I remember Apple going through its permutations but I don't remember learning about it it feels like it was always there just ingrained in the culture yeah that's right was there a disparity between like your parents your dad was a firefighter versus my dad works at a tech company or my dad works at Apple was that like part of the the high school I know high schoolers can be mean was that part of your growing up no I you know what I didn't notice it I think I noticed it in college because then all of a sudden you had a whole bunch of students coming from Cupertino and they were driving their very fancy cars that's when I remember it at UC Davis is which kids came from that part of the Silicon Valley my first car by the way cost me 150 and it was a Dodge Charger 1976.
my name is that's amazing yes Yes mine was Dodge Intrepid what was yours I had a Pontiac G6 I had just watched The Fast and Furious uh series and I like totally decked it out and what I thought was decked out and looking back terrible car it's awesome tell me a little bit about your first professional job can you bridge the gap of how you went from growing up in the Bay Area to then going into economics and art yeah I was an entrepreneur at the Smithsonian I love that I don't know if that was a bridge or not but that's where I started that's a great bridge yeah yeah so I studied both economics and art I was I went to grad school I figured I was going to get an MBA or an MFA landed on the MFA because I got a scholarship that shows for me yeah I went to the east coast because I figured it's an opportunity for growth so I better go and do something I haven't done before ended up in New England and then my my then boyfriend now husband was a scientist so he had all the job offers and being in the Arts you go where the job is and there's no backup there's no second place for not getting that art Professor job which is the career I was angling for and it's not like you they pay off half your loans and say here teach a class no you're you're either winner you don't I ended up applying to every single School in the Washington DC area every College every private high school because I had all the material put together my students material my own portfolio and that's because my husband was accepting a job down in Washington DC so I ended up picking up a paid internship at the Smithsonian and also an adjunct teaching position so between the two piecemealed it together that's really cool yeah I would imagine you probably learned some things about entrepreneurship at a in an institution like the Smithsonian what were some of the bigger takeaways that you still see applicable to the work that you're doing today yeah that's a great question because it quite literally is all the factors and actors that enable you to do something new that is the definition of ecosystem factors and actors and the relationships between them so with a huge bureaucracy like the Smithsonian which is a quasi-federal government agency you have to figure out who's interested in coming to the table and figuring out how we're going to do this so you have that North Star so one of them for us was opening a new center called the lunder Conservation Center it was the art conservation Laboratories but made visible with glass walls the idea being you can't be warm to a cause you don't know about so you better make it visible so people can care about it yeah and we put a lot of money into preserving our cultural Treasures so why not show all the science and investment that we spend on on this which is a parallel to entrepreneurship if you're investing on the front end you're saying hey we're not doing this for right now we're doing this for five or ten years out or in cultural preservation 100 years out 500 years out yeah that's really cool yeah that's really cool tell me about how you went from the non-profit Arts world and found your way into the intersection of nonprofit and for-profit yeah so I let's see it was 2000 and eight the economy was doing its toilet bowl spiral and was that scary no because I had an endowed position at the Smithsonian that's about it it's a nice situation but I managed to scare my parents when I said hey I'm gonna go take this new job so my husband had gone up to get his PhD in Massachusetts cool and so we were doing that long distance marriage and some couples can do it we I did not like doing the long distance marriage that's challenging yeah so I was applying to jobs but during any recession there's usually no jobs so there was this one that was posted from an advanced manufacturer and they basically went to the distribution list where all the art conservators were looking for jobs now I was not in our conservator but I was working with them because of that new center and they said we're looking for someone from the museum world who can come and help us go to market I don't think I even knew what go to market was at that point but at that I know museums all apply to this job and I ended up getting it and that was great because they said I could live wherever I wanted to live Massachusetts as long as I lived near an airport because I was going to be on an airplane every week and what do they manufacture they Advance its glass and acrylic with certain Coatings that make the material behave differently is that the same company that you use at Smithsonian or was it a different company we were buying their products we were as was the National Gallery and the British Museum and that that was the company's biggest problem is they knew that customers at these museums were using their product but they couldn't get sales calls so that's what we call Ideal customer profile and really dialing in on your target market someone who comes from the exact Marketplace that you're trying to sell to that's right that's awesome yeah and so I thought why not it was the only it was the only company hiring in early 2009 business lesson number one if a company is hiring in the bottom of a reception of a session they have a healthy balance sheet so yeah that was then that was our deal I said look I don't know the first thing about business but I want to learn because I was going to get an MBA but I didn't so this will be my applied MBA and I'll get you guys into whatever Museum you want to get into I love that yeah that's really cool yeah through that whole process I know you lived in a lot of different places Bay Area DC Chicago Philly yeah what brought you to Indiana and why have you stayed yeah so let's see it was Philadelphia that I was I did a non-profit turnaround combining that for-profit know-how in the non-profit know-how in in Philadelphia at a small 501c3 and my husband was done finishing up his PhD and he was an immunologist and so he was applying for post docs all over the country and when you're applying for a postdoc in The Sciences at a company they'll fly you out have you talked to 374 people and then you come back a day or two later and he had been doing a lot of these interviews in San Diego and New York came back from this one I lost track he came back from this one and he was excited like I could just tell his energy level was up and I thought okay where was this one sounds like this is a winner and I was just finishing up that that work with that Philadelphia non-profit and they were in a much better position so I felt like okay I can hand this off now and he said Eli Lilly I thought okay where's that so that is amazing yeah that's great looked it up it was in Indiana and Eli Lilly is the number two exporter of Life Sciences in the world I believe it is good place for a poster they hold one of the highest number of patents of any company uh in their competitive set it's pretty amazing yeah we should probably get someone from their Innovation department on the show at some point that'd be cool that'd be a great idea let's do that that'd be awesome yeah very cool what was your first impression of Indiana I immediately as he was accepting the position I went through my address book because my entire Professional Network was on the East Coast address book you know the on the phone it was on the phone contacts typed in Indiana one one person showed up it was Richard McCoy who's now exhibit Columbus and called him up because we had let's see he had been at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as an objects conservator when I was at Smithsonian and we met at the Mellon Foundation at some program seven years earlier but it's a small enough world where you can call someone after seven years and say hey how you doing so I said yeah moving to Indiana what do I need to know you don't want to be my only friend how do I how do I fix that he told me to join the Speakeasy and I thought I'm joining a bar I like Indiana already that's incredible right that someone who's in the museum sector and the first thing that they recommend is the Speakeasy which is involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that's right yeah that's awesome first co-working space at least in Indianapolis may be the state yeah specifically for entrepreneurs right yeah and that's what he said because he asked what do you want to do and I said I don't know yet I want to do go to market for somebody right yeah did that so he said go to the Speakeasy because there's a lot of people launching cool things so at least you'll get to talk to a lot of good people that is awesome I love it yeah and that's how I that's how I found the portable folk I I just started talking to a whole bunch of Speakeasy members and eventually got connected with Andy and Jeb that's a beautiful example of the home of the one degree separation right yeah here in Indiana you can quickly connect to relevant things that are fulfilling whether it's personal or professional that's awesome quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweyer 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 kind of 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 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 and they can also get their tickets I'll love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there I remember those days Julian I remember when you first moved to town because everyone was recommending we get connected and here we are yeah and here we are here we are connected how did you actually end up working with this Speakeasy because I know you originally got connected with portable right and had a chance to jump into a startup yeah which is fantastic very early stages so maybe let's slow down and talk about that experience because I would imagine that was a very different culture and environment than the Smithsonian and some of the museum and arts work that you had done yeah because if you think of the quadrants of the professional world with for-profit on one side and non-profit on the other and large organizations and small I had been in the other three yeah but I hadn't been in a small startup so that was new and I joined when there were zero paying customers so going from zero paying customers to that first customer's second tenth the White Knuckle moment here we go hold on it was phenomenal it was phenomenal and I think Joe Downey the developer one of the founders and I were the only full-time people so I was the first employee who was not a founder and being able to be in in those trenches figuring out all right how do we build this thing um it turned out to be fantastic in that our customers were non-profit Executives and I turned around on non-profits so I understood what it was I knew the problem set I understood what unmet need we were meeting and so that was a really important part of understanding both customer Discovery and building out the product roadmap at the same time but yeah on that customer segment all customer segments are different and so understanding their language and how they think how they talk what that business case is in that environment right yeah listening between the lines to the those pain points yes absolutely this this is a really cool example of crossing over from non-tech into Tech which is a question we get a lot at Powder Keg we've got a lot of people who are experienced in their careers and they're looking to plug into a job in Tech in Innovation and I think what's really neat about how you found your door into the industry is you found a tech company a SAS company that was focused on what you were focused on serving the customer that you had been right for many years and had institutional knowledge in very similar to how Nate broke into the industry because he came from a benefits company where he had been an ore fellow for two years so working in HR then moving to an HR tech company which I would put powder kegs in that Venn diagram at least that's a part of our mix yeah so that's really cool that you're able to navigate that yeah and it's probably worth highlighting there that if you understand the pain points of a certain set of professionals you probably have a place at a startup yeah yeah at this point let's double click that's the old phrase Right double click yeah in their commercials this is such a this is an imperative I think for people to realize there's a lot of folks out there and I talk to my son's friends right he's 15 and they have this perception that to be in Tech you have to be a developer you have to understand how to manage complex data sets and all these put fingertips on keyboards and write code but they're that's just the tip of the iceberg right in Tech and startups and Tech enabled companies and having these other skill sets customer success sales product might be right what did were you nervous scared were you like okay I'm doing something totally different I've been in a museum curation protecting these incredible assets for thousands of years in the future then you worked for a manufacturer who who built the products very fancy glass very fancy glass now you're going to jump off this crazy cliff into the abyss of a zero Revenue pre-revenue company no customers what was that like it was like or do you know how to code it was yeah no I don't know how to code and it was like every other step of the career I think and you only get this with hindsight right if I Look Backwards at my career every chapter was an example of something that hadn't been done before yep so at Smithsonian first it was launching a distance learning program that hadn't been done before launching this new Conservation Center hadn't been done before going over working on this for this Advanced manufacturer on this go to market method that hadn't been done before in in the way we did it so Julie is an early adopter absolutely in my career yeah so that that didn't feel any different it it certainly had a whole bunch of new jargon that I had to learn but I think that's good for us too especially when it comes to Innovation you mentioned learning the jargon in software and in Tech what kind of advice do you have for people who are looking to break into Tech and maybe even building their Network for the the first time in a new industry whether that's straight out of college or not even college or it's crossing over from another industry what were some of the things that you did yeah and I'll even go deeper right you show up at the Speak Easy Day One not technically an entrepreneur or no background in Tech everyone's what are you working on what are you building what was your pitch what did you say I think I said I'm just looking to get connected here which I didn't realize was a powerful thing to say yeah because I think we know now with the power of weak ties in career paths it's really important to understand that if you are meeting someone new then you're expanding your network so if you are only talking this is my advice if you're only talking to people you already know you're not doing yourself any favors you got to go and meet new people because every time you meet someone new you're meeting their entire network and there's social researchers who can cite the Dunbar number and explain why that's so powerful mathematically but we've had that proven out now in terms of career paths where if you can go and show up at the Speakeasy or show up at some other center of gravity and talk to someone new that's the best thing you can do for yourself amen and Hallelujah as you're having these connections was there anything that you did during those conversations or even as a follow-up that you think helped turn those not just into connections but real professional relationships yeah and I would keep going back so enjoying the Speakeasy so that I could show up on any given day or week and pick up a conversation so if I met you last week I'm gonna remember your name and we'll say Hey you mentioned you were working on this new podcast how's it going did you how'd that last interview go if you remember someone's name you keep going back I think that's probably the best thing you can do it's a little bit different from traditional networking in terms of thinking I'm going to go to this one-off event that doesn't that's not as important as going back and then it's much more natural right that's right you're going to a place where people want to meet collaborate communicate that's right much more natural it's almost like the difference between a networking event and joining a community that's right you joined and you showed up that's right and you put in the work because you have to remember all these names that's powerful and remember what people are doing and what they're interested in because if I can remember that then we're going to have a conversation what if somebody's terrified what if we have listened or someone's listening right now yeah and they're like oh my gosh she's so brave there's no way I could ever walk into the Speakeasy and say hi my name is Toph and I'm just here to meet people what if they're terrified of that and hopefully there's a community manager usually usually there's someone whose job it is to at least welcome you and introduce you to that first person that don't mind come up and introduce yourself totally agree it's totally great if you think about that there's two people I might be frightened to go up and introduce myself but the person on the other side of that isn't gonna isn't gonna think that's weird they put their pants on the morning and they're gonna be like hey great to meet you and then they're gonna think oh my goodness you have initiative going up and introducing yourself yep it's a good thing yep is there a way your community building slash networking skills have evolved with technology are there things that you're doing whether it be LinkedIn email social media that you're doing that it's helped build community yeah yeah that's a great question by the way I say have you two met it's like my favorite phrase on the planet have you done that yeah because a I don't have to remember your name so I've forgotten that's a protest right that's a pro tip and also if I've remembered something by the way we truly did that once a couple months ago to me she said hey have you two met yeah I love that what was your name again that's the number one thing and and I recommend it especially at events where you see that person you're like oh yeah I know we know each other how do we know each other and I remember something about what you're doing and and what's great is you can just introduce someone else based on that little tidbit I love it it's a new CEO of elevate Ventures have you met I love it that's a great tip I just made an intro tof yesterday yes reintro tough knows everybody but that was great yeah yeah that's right and it works in person and to answer your question it also works on LinkedIn yeah you can put two people on a message have you two met I think you might be interested in talking to each other Shameless plug or on Powder cake there you go what were some of the challenges at Speakeasy Because by the time you were plugging in it was an established organization and you had now experienced working at a SAS company from zero to right if there were 92 customers yeah that's awesome yeah that's awesome and they so actually what had happened with the Speakeasy as they had expanded they had their original location in South Broad Ripple and then they had brought on an additional location downtown and it was it was an interesting business model situation for a small non-profit usually small nonprofits are filling a need that is a community or societal need but with 501c3s usually there's some type of business model failure and that's really important to acknowledge because if there isn't business model failure then you're a for-profit but because 501c3s are solving for a societal need you have to really get clear on what that thing is and with the Speakeasy it is a shared economy of space and know-how so you get the connections you get that we call it know how via know who if you were stuck on something I'd be like I think one of these two might know how to help you get unstuck what didn't work was having a very big footprint downtown especially when the Big Box store co-working organizations were moving in sure if you're a mom-and-pop shop and the big box stores move in with a lot of out-of-state investors your chances of survival are pretty low so the board had brought me on to say he how do we navigate this yeah how did you navigate it were there a couple big lessons you learned and yeah yeah the I think the biggest lesson is you ask your community why does this need to exist and then you solve it from there yeah or customers or yeah fill in the blank yeah why does this need to exist what would we take away is there anything that if we took it away it would be painful yeah exactly the customer discovery exactly because it all comes back to customer discovery love to learn a little bit more about what you're doing now at The iedc Economic Development Corporation of Indiana in that transition how yeah how did you transition into IDC yeah let's see so I had in the course of working at the Speakeasy I was seeing that a lot of new companies were being born and I could see that there were a whole bunch of new jobs that previously hadn't existed so in the course of asking why does this need to exist I thought we've got a bunch of anecdotes but how do we put some numbers to this some metrics and so we started with the help of Mike Kelly at Developer Town we started figuring out like I love the companies who've spent time at the Speakeasy where are they now like where are they now in terms of Revenue fundraise hiring so we started just counting employees here they hear these new jobs that exist now that didn't exist before the Speakeasy was in existence and so I started um adding up their revenue which is did a sample set of about 50 companies and their estimated aggregated Revenue was over 100 million as of 2018 and wow yeah and they're like 923 jobs that had been created and I didn't know what the labor income was associated with those jobs but I thought that's a lot of money yeah and there's probably a lot of income tax revenue yep coming back from those jobs that didn't exist yesterday but now exist and will exist tomorrow so I started doing some searching about who else was thinking about Community well-being through economic health specifically around entrepreneurship and I found the Kauffman foundation so I went out to Kansas City for the conference that's called The eship Summit that ran from 2017 to 2020 and got to meet 400 others who like me were very interested in this idea of community well-being through economic health specific to entrepreneurship yeah so that's where the data started to come in the Kaufman Foundation is one of those entities amazing that is just incredible based in the midwest as well down in Kansas City and the ability to bring these Community Builders around the US and Beyond yeah is really cool to see that kind of knowledge share yeah so I came back from that Summit in 2019 with all this new data because it's very helpful right you have to have you have to have the stories to make the data interesting yep but then you need the data to to prove that the stories are believable and effective so I came back and I started doing debriefs just with anyone else who was interested in supporting entrepreneurs all the other support organizations and saying here's what I learned there's no point in it staying in my head here's what we know about the economic impact of entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship and I at one point I had the chance to share some of that with Dave Roberts over at the iadc and so the transition really happened because man are we Lucky in Indiana our governor appointed an entrepreneur to be our secretary of Commerce absolutely that changed everything so secretary Brad Chambers made entrepreneurship a priority and Dave Roberts gave me a call and said hey can you come bring out well there's some data and I think Brad gets paid 99 cents a year that's right and he says that publicly so hopefully yeah that's it yeah he's doing this yeah to underscore that he's doing this as a service project yes he knows the power of starting a company from scratch growing it up so it's a significant contributor to your local economy and he says he wants to pay it forward for others who want to start companies understands the importance of place too yeah which is pretty neat maybe we need to get Brad on the show at some time I think it sounds like a great idea oh I love that digging in at iedc what have been some of the most exciting projects that you've worked on and maybe are currently working on yeah okay you ready hold on hold on everybody hold on to your house so and this goes back to entrepreneurs and what we advise them right if you have 10 seconds in the elevator with someone what do you say the number one thing that we need to figure out is how do entrepreneurs impact our economic health as a state there's one metric that everyone seems to understand which is GDP and so immediately started asking how do we see our state's GDP that is contributed by our youngest companies and so the most exciting moment of this year of 2022 was when our friends over at IU's business Research Center came back with basically a first pass it looks like it was 11.
5 billion in 2021 so 11. 5 billion of our state's GDP was contributed by companies under five years of age and that's a conservative estimate because that only counts the young companies that have employees so it doesn't include sole Proprietors for those who haven't hired yet so it's a conservative estimate wow that's what I say in an elevator if someone says why is entrepreneurship powerful in terms of the state's economy 11. 5 billion yeah in 2021. wow that's incredible you have off top your head the state's GDP in like the biggest contributor it's about that the 11. 5 billion is about three percent so as a percentage it's not huge but it becomes powerful when you look at the research around how young fast-growing companies are punching way above their weight class in terms of productivity yeah absolutely the what's one of the largest one I think manufacturing manufacturing and Life Sciences a second is that right I don't remember okay yeah but yeah agreed it's I love it looking at through the lens of GDP yeah that's amazing how does someone plug in to the iudc I know there's a ton of programs right now that the state is running to even grow that 11.
5 to an even bigger number what are some of those programs where people can plug in and find a way to contribute yeah as of today we've got one program right here in terms of elevate Ventures and another in terms of the Small Business Development Centers today you can reach out to elevate you can reach out to sbdc and get help for the company you're starting so those are the quickest ways we're also working on a digital front door the secretary has said when I started my company there was no single place to go where I knew I would find all of the resources and all of those organizations that support people who are starting companies he said I want us to have a digital front door where there's no wrong door after that so we're working on that very cool yeah that's exciting I love what Julie just said there so the intentionality that that Julie IDC is State have aligns directly back to the Kaufman foundation with their definitions of the tale of two entrepreneurs as they talk about smes versus ades so SME being small and medium Enterprises aligns directly to the spdc and then the Ides The Innovation driven Enterprises aligned directly to what Elevate Ventures does and so it's very intentional right and that's why I really love about what you've been doing there Julie is the intentionality of direct connectivity this digital front door concept is makes it very efficient ecosystem yeah yeah it Taps into what I think might be the Holy Grail in terms of where we're going to go just out of CES I met Steve case and got a copy of his rise of the rest book where Indianapolis is highlighted yeah in terms of the exact target Salesforce story and he talked about how do we think about the ecosystem work and how do we skate to where the puck will be and a big part of I think what we're doing right now around that intentionality is saying here's my night matters here's how we're going to measure it we're going to we're going to tell some stories because we have success stories hiding in plain sight all over this state in terms of people and historically we've never talked about it no no we've never talked about it yeah yeah and so we one of our one of our stories so I'm over here looking at this we call it internally the yearbook it's called entrepreneur entrepreneurship Indiana 2022.
it's an oversized Magazine with a hundred stories about 75 stories of entrepreneurs and another 25 of the organizations and the people who support entrepreneurs and I think you know what's beautiful is that when you are intentional and you say what is celebrated is emulated and you say we're going to create this artifact that has long shelf life that that can be handed from one person to another and you're intentional about making sure you have a story from every corner of the state and I can't remember we have over 40 counties represented I think in these and in these stories that gets people excited yes and then so you combine the stories with the data and at least then if you have more than 10 seconds in the elevator you can dig in on the anecdotes of why it matters where does somebody get a copy of the yearbook yeah entrepreneurshipindiana. com yeah you can get a you can download a digital copy I don't know if we have figured out how to distribute the hard copies we just launched it during Global entrepreneurship week cool I love it we'll link that up in the show notes so we can help share those stories because that's what this is all about right that's 100 right yeah and I don't know if we'll get there in terms of connectedness but that's definitely something that if we look at the next year what we're thinking about what can you give us two minutes on local connectedness because we're about to enter the lightning round but I want to make sure we at least tease the local connectedness and of course we'll have you back on the show later once yeah once a lot of those things have been rolled out yeah that'll be exciting yeah yeah so what's given with entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs are going to get stuck when you haven't done something before there's no blueprint that is inherent in the process so what what we did when we started this work about a year ago was we decided to do an assessment of where we are we didn't want to just Benchmark against Ohio and Michigan we wanted to know where Indiana was compared to Tel Aviv and Taipei City and Western Sweden so we hired startup genome which is a group that has assessed over 100 ecosystems in over 45 countries so we like their global data set and they worked with us and interviewed and surveyed a few hundred of our entrepreneurs our High-Tech high growth entrepreneurs in had about 200 slides of findings but there was one in particular that I was beyond excited about and it's called local connectedness what it measures is how much help you can get from peers like other Founders from investors whether or not they've invested experts community members this this impulse toward helping each other it's who's your hospitality right here's your hospitality Appliance your entrepreneurship yeah we know we know it's strong we know that in real and and real we know that's just in terms of our culture here in the Midwest what we didn't know until now is the impact of it the impact of it is that it's a way for us to bet on all of our startups and the impact relates to revenue so what they found is that the regions like ours first of all we're globally competitive we are up there with Tel Aviv we are up there with Taipei City and that's pretty exciting to highlight yeah the regions with the highest level of local connectedness accelerate all of their startups in quarterly Revenue growth twice as fast as the regions with the lowest level of local connectedness think about that for a minute we have a way intentionally to bet on all of our startups in terms of growing their revenue that is the Holy Grail and the exponential factor of that is insane through the roof yep that's amazing Julie I love it thank you for sharing that that's really cool I think we've got two more minutes all right we're here for the lightning round we have four questions for you Julie that are gonna really show what kind of hoosier you are okay all right so we're gonna start out outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what do you think Indiana is known for that's related that impulse toward neighborliness neighborliness I love that it's like we can measure it local connectedness yeah I love it all right favorite college in the state favorite college I feel like I'm gonna get in trouble you gotta pick one yeah I have no favorites I work for this state sir I have no favorites no favorites boo yeah I like it give us your Hidden Gem in Indiana hidden gems gem I love the conservatory at the zoo in the middle of January and February when it's been dark and cold for weeks and weeks you can go inside there and feel like you're in a tropical forest that is that's good yeah that does wonders I love that the conservatory at the zoo all right final one ready who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who's doing big things the present company excluded [Laughter] present company excluded Bethany Hartley up in Elkhart in South Bend she's absolutely knocking it out of the park yeah she's excitable found in fact we just had founder Factory as part of global entrepreneurship week and she and her team put together the most amazing lineup including the head of Google for startups Jewel Burke Solomon and her partner from collab capital it was knocked out of the park successful and she not only had this phenomenal lineup and then had a whole bunch of small working group sessions so the entrepreneurs could get unstuck like in in the course of the conference she also invited about a hundred students 100 high school students to come in and hear from the speakers it was phenomenal I love that nice so we need you to give us one of those do you two know each other we'll get Bethany on the show then perfect that's great thanks for being on the show yeah this is wonderful great job Julie was awesome yeah congratulations on your journey your success I love it yeah takes the team can't wait to see what 2023 has in store yeah I love it yeah I hear Indiana is a good place to start a company in 2023.
thank you number one yeah Go Forbes check it out 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 our 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.
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