This Thursday, AOL co-founder Steve Case’s sixth Rise of the Rest tour is making a stop in Indianapolis, IN, where Powderkeg’s headquarters are proudly located. Ten local tech companies will participate in a pitch competition that showcases the best in Indy entrepreneurship and promises a $100,000 investment for the startup that comes out on top. In anticipation of the event, I gathered all ten finalists for candid roundtable discussions about their companies, their struggles and successes, and ...
Oct 10, 2017•58 min
A company’s product is its lifeblood. It’s the one thing most responsible for a company’s success or failure, which is why smart product design is an absolute must for every business. And truly expert-level product design goes much deeper than nailing the visual aesthetic for your website. I called in help from Aman Brar and Mike Reynolds, two respected Indianapolis-area CEOs, to unpack this very loaded and very important topic. Brar is the founder of Canvas, the first ever recruitment platform ...
Oct 03, 2017•47 min
Building and scaling a tech platform is no easy task even for someone with a background and years of experience in software development, let alone a recent college grad with no formal tech education. But that’s exactly what Sarah Adler did when she co-founded Spoon University with her good friend and business partner. Setting out to build an online media platform featuring food and cooking-related content created by and for college students, Adler taught herself to code and created the first sev...
Sep 26, 2017•51 min
An education in innovative thinking can change a person’s life, opening the door to more fulfilling careers and better opportunities to make a real impact on the world. Unfortunately, it’s not something most people are likely to receive in a traditional academic setting—unless they’re a student of Don Wettrick. Wettrick is a teacher at Noblesville High School just north of Indianapolis, IN and the co-founder of StartEdUp, an organization that’s changing education by empowering innovation and ent...
Sep 19, 2017•45 min
A talented co-founder can be an incredible asset to an entrepreneur, providing a second set of shoulders to bear the responsibilities of business and a second opinion to test ideas against. The right co-founder can compliment your strengths, compensate for your weaknesses and make every aspect of the company better than you could make it by yourself. But don’t just take my word from it. Instead, listen to business partners, Scott Hill and Andy Medley, co-founders of the marketing tech company, P...
Sep 12, 2017•58 min
At Powderkeg, we believe every entrepreneur has their own personal superpower that makes them great at what they do. Scott Hill’s superpower is being a visionary—that is, being exceptionally capable of seeing opportunities that others can’t and understanding exactly how to prepare so he can seize them when the time is right. I met Hill at a pivotal time in my life, when I was still a college student in Bloomington, IN, and thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. Hill’s company, PERQ, was in pri...
Aug 29, 2017•46 min
A brief glimpse at Rachael Qualls’ resumé will convince you that she’s a true innovator in the world of venture capital and angel investing. A brief meeting with her at a Powderkeg pitch night in Kansas City, MO, convinced me that I had to invite her on the podcast to share her deep knowledge of fundraising and investing with our community of entrepreneurs. Qualls has a decade of experience building and investing in companies, first among the flourishing tech ecosystem in Nashville, TN, and now ...
Aug 22, 2017•51 min
The U.S. healthcare industry is in the midst of a rapid evolution to accommodate changing government legislation, market pressures and technological opportunities. The environment is ripe for disruption by innovative startups, but health tech founders face a number of unique obstacles on the road to success. In this episode of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, I sit down with health tech entrepreneurs Susan Bratton and Stryker Warren to learn more about these obstacles and how to surmount them. Brat...
Aug 15, 2017•39 min
Following last month’s announcement that Powderkeg has officially become a product company, my team and I have been doing some intensive planning on how to build a world-class customer experience (CX). With this in mind, I sought out Haresh Gangwani of Bolstra and Don Aquilano of Allos Ventures for this episode to get the perspective and advice of two experts in the SaaS Customer Success space. Gangwani and Aquilano have a combined 30 years of customer success experience, Gangwani as a business ...
Aug 08, 2017•48 min
Last Thursday evening, in front of an audience of more than 600 tech entrepreneurs, professionals and investors, I had the privilege of making a monumental announcement. My company, Verge—a community of over 10,000 members in 8 cities across the country—is merging with Powderkeg and reinventing itself as a product company that will continue to serve this incredible community in new and exciting ways. Over the coming months, my team and I will be building a software product that will connect our ...
Aug 01, 2017•58 min
My ongoing search for the best and brightest tech entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley leads me to a lot of remarkable founders building incredible companies all around the world. But for this episode of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, I decided I’d look closer to home and consult with a few gifted minds inside my very own office. Robert Harris and Kevin Bailey are my colleagues at Powderkeg and its parent company, Verge, and they’re also two of the smartest and most talented people I know. They b...
Jul 25, 2017•53 min
We talk a lot about the power of great mentors here on Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, and today I’m thrilled to introduce one of the most influential mentors I’ve had in my life. Tim Kopp is an experienced brand and digital marketer who’s taught me much of what I know as well as coached me throughout my evolving entrepreneurial journey. When I first met Kopp, he was CMO at ExactTarget, the Indianapolis SaaS startup that sold to Salesforce in 2013 for $2.5 billion. Prior to his time there, Kopp sp...
Jul 18, 2017•45 min
“Cash is king,” the old saying goes, and every entrepreneur will realize at some point along their journey that their business can’t run smoothly without a good financial model. But the intricacies of bookkeeping and accounting can be a bit daunting without a knowledgeable guide, which is why I found two to help me navigate this thorny issue. My first guest, Tom Gabbert, has 25 years of experience in financial management under his belt. He’s also the founder of mAccounting, an Indianapolis-based...
Jul 11, 2017•1 hr
Michael Litt (@michaellitt) is the CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, a leading provider of video hosting software for businesses and the kind of high-growth company you might expect to find in Silicon Valley. Although the company completed the prestigious Bay Area accelerator Y Combinator, it began and continues to operate in Kitchener, Ontario. CEO Michael Litt co-founded Vidyard in 2011, and the company has since raised over $60 million and gained world-class brands like LinkedIn, Lenovo, Sharp, ...
Jun 20, 2017•34 min
If your business doesn’t have a clear, step-by-step process for turning curious consumers into paying customers, you could be losing revenue in missed opportunities. Fortunately, marketing whiz Russell Brunson provides expert advice in this week’s episode on capturing leads through the use of sales funnels and storytelling. Taking an early interest to marketing, Brunson has become an evangelist for sales funnels and the ability to fuel rapid business growth. His company, ClickFunnels, has helped...
Jun 13, 2017•43 min
Shane Mac, a Silicon Valley transplant from his hometown of Pekin, Illinois, is a master of building authentic relationships based on trust and personal connection. In fact, he’s so good at winning people over with his honest Midwestern brand image, that he’s learned how to raise capital without ever asking for money. I met Mac a few years ago at the Big Omaha conference in Omaha, Nebraska, and he’s consistently blown me away with his ability to grow funded companies ever since. He’s worked on t...
Jun 06, 2017•1 hr 5 min
Heather Hartnett took a nontraditional path to the world of venture capital, and it’s ignited a great passion for enabling social change through technology and business. She now leverages her experience to help founders build better companies through commitments to diversity, personal wellness and positive impact. Hartnett began her career in venture capital but was quickly compelled to move into the philanthropy space, where she spent five years on the board of directors for the David Lynch Fou...
May 30, 2017•50 min
Brand marketer and venture capitalist Dave Knox is an expert in relationships between large companies and startups, as he has extensive experience working in both worlds. Knox began his career at Procter & Gamble, where he consistently pushed the envelope in terms of marketing and digital innovation, eventually spearheading the company’s development of digital business strategies. He left the company in 2010 to co-found The Brandery, a startup accelerator in Cincinnati, OH, leveraging his se...
May 23, 2017•51 min
Clint Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Emma, a SaaS company out of Nashville, TN, that has created a new standard of success for bootstrapping businesses and hosting innovative, engaging conferences. Smith and his co-founder conceived Emma’s email marketing platform in 2002 and took out a bank loan to fund their initial growth. By developing a healthy revenue model and focusing on customer acquisition from the start, they were able to break even on their cash flow only a year and a half later....
May 16, 2017•49 min
The “Millennial Mentor” Gerard Adams is a thought leader for his generation and is rapidly becoming a role model for young entrepreneurs around the world. You probably know Adams as the co-founder of Elite Daily, an online news platform and the “Voice of Generation Y,” which sold to DMG Media for $50 million in January 2015. After leaving the company, Adams did some soul searching and started Fownders, a coworking accelerator in Newark, New Jersey. The Fownders program focuses not only on scalin...
May 09, 2017•48 min
Alicia Syrett is the founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital, a seed and early-stage angel investment firm based in New York. You might know her better as a recurring panelist on CNBC’s Power Pitch or MSNBC’s Your Business, where you’ll see her fielding high-stakes pitches and coaching small business owners. Syrett began her career in private equity and has years of experience in financial analysis, recruiting, and early-stage startup investing. She brings her wealth of knowledge to our interview,...
May 02, 2017•57 min
On the first 25 episodes of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, we’ve been able to share dozens of best practices and actionable insights through interviews with leading tech entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders. We’ve also learned the personal stories of each guest and have witnessed some powerful moments of vulnerability and authenticity. Some of our favorite segments on the show have come from these great spur-of-the-moment stories told by our guests. In this week’s special episode, we rev...
Apr 25, 2017•31 min
Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown are the world’s leading experts on growth hacking. The two first worked together at Qualaroo, a marketing SaaS solution they grew to millions in recurring revenue before Ellis sold the company in 2016. At the same time they were working on Qualaroo, they were also building a community of innovative marketers on Ellis’ GrowthHackers website. With Brown serving as the interim Head of Growth, the duo built GrowthHackers into a definitive learning platform, software solut...
Apr 18, 2017•50 min
Brian Clark is a serial entrepreneur of several seven-figure online businesses, including Rainmaker Digital (which is actually now an eight-figure software company), where he currently serves as CEO. And guess what? He did it all without moving to Silicon Valley OR raising any venture funding. He did it with content marketing! Brian and I recorded this interview at an interesting time, just before he launched his Unemployable podcast, which now reaches more than tens of thousands of subscribers....
Apr 11, 2017•48 min
Knowledge comes with experience, and Jeff Leventhal has 25 years of experience in the tech startup world, including leading five companies from idea to exit and investing in many others. It’s an understatement to say he’s learned a few things on his entrepreneurial journey. Leventhal’s great professional passion has been using technology to facilitate the delivery of professional services. His current iteration on solving this problem is WorkRails, a SaaS solution that helps other software compa...
Apr 04, 2017•40 min
Meeting the right people at the right time can catapult your business to the next level. But it’s difficult to make connections that go deeper than a LinkedIn invite, and it's far too easy to play it safe at networking events, which makes forging authentic relationships that much harder. David Olk is the cofounder and CEO of Voray, a company that facilitates small-group networking dinners. A Voray event is hosted by a key influencer in an industry who invites a select group of their close friend...
Mar 28, 2017•1 hr 3 min
It takes guts, grit, and an uncommon dose of wisdom to lead a business team. Sameer Dholakia has all three qualities, plus two decades of leadership experience in enterprise software. Dholakia is the CEO of SendGrid, one of the world’s premier email delivery services. SendGrid serves 50,000 customers and delivers 1.3 billion emails each day—more than double Twitter’s daily Tweet volume. In addition to its classic transactional email API, SendGrid more recently rolled out an email marketing produ...
Mar 21, 2017•1 hr 3 min
Erica Duignan Minnihan knows what investors like to see in startups, and she knows the difficulties founders face meeting those expectations. She has more than 10 years of experience in early-stage startup investing, and now she’s out to help both investors and entrepreneurs be better at their jobs. Minnihan is currently the Managing Partner at 1000 Angels, a digital venture investment platform launched by OneVest that helps independent investors around the world assess potential deals and build...
Mar 14, 2017•48 min
Max Yoder is a lifelong learner and trailblazer who knows that clearly-defined processes empower employees to level-up their quality of work from average to exceptional. Yoder is the cofounder and CEO of Lessonly, a team learning software platform that lets companies capture internal knowledge, best practices, and team policies as searchable and assignable step-by-step lessons. Lessonly currently helps half a million users from hundreds of companies learn the processes they need to excel in thei...
Mar 07, 2017•36 min
Emerson Spartz has hunted down and capitalized on patterns in business since he was 12 years old. Fast-forward 18 years, and Spartz is the CEO of Dose, a digital media company that reaches 200 million Millennials every month with content designed to provide fresh ideas, knowledge and perspectives. Spartz is also one of the world’s leading experts on virality, having extensively studied its patterns and used what he learned to build his media company that was onced composed of more than 30 unique...
Feb 28, 2017•44 min
