The product development process needs far more than just an exciting idea and money. Your idea is just the beginning. You also need a team to get it out of the dream phase, and a plan to keep it on track. Not to mention, a marketing strategy that clearly defines the problem to your audience—and why your product is the solution. Today on the Igniting Startups podcast, you’ll learn how to take a product from concept to market. Joining us are two veterans in the field of new product development. Fi...
Mar 12, 2019•55 min
Corporate innovation marks an enormous opportunity for tech companies today. Large organizations are embracing innovation and disruption to stay competitive in their industries, sometimes partnering with startups that can provide efficient solutions. But these partnerships can be tricky to manage, as startups and corporations tend to work at different speeds and often have goals that aren’t clearly aligned. Fortunately, our guest on this episode is one of those rare tech professionals who unders...
Mar 05, 2019•51 min
Thought leadership marketing goes far beyond solidifying your industry expertise and authority. What’s more important (and more difficult) is establishing trust and influence. This is what creates an entry point for your customers. It’s often not a quick process, but when done right, it builds a steadily filling funnel of warm leads. On today’s episode of the Igniting Startups podcast, we’ll look at how to establish yourself—or another influencer at your company—as a thought leader in your indus...
Feb 26, 2019•51 min
A well-defined company culture serves several purposes. First, it lays out the values that drive the company’s success. Second, it helps employees understand how to create that success. Third, it tells the world what makes the company unique. That last point is the focus of this episode of the Igniting Startup podcast. We explore how to promote company culture as a unique part of your overall marketing strategy. We’ve brought on two experts to help us dive into the subject today. Max Yoder, CEO,...
Feb 19, 2019•34 min
Branding. It’s one of the most important elements of any company, but it’s also something startup owners might not know how to go about creating. Fortunately, our guest on this episode of the Igniting Startups podcast is a leading expert on all things related to brand (including employer branding). She breaks branding down to its simplest components for time-strapped founders. Tiffany Sauder is the founder and president of Element Three, a full-service marketing agency in Indianapolis. In just 1...
Feb 12, 2019•51 min
Imagine you’ve founded a business and led it to profitability. Your growth plan is working, your company culture is strong, and there’s a clear path to sustained prosperity. But you discover another business owner whose vision complements yours. Then you meet, and slowly the idea of joining forces becomes a real possibility. Do you stay the course, or explore a deal? That scenario mirrors the one Tom Gabbert, founder and managing director of mAccounting, and Jessica Mah, founder and CEO of inDin...
Feb 05, 2019•46 min
It wasn’t long ago that world-changing technology could only be built in a few places, by a few people, at prohibitively high costs. But that time has passed. High-speed internet and cloud computing have opened opportunities for people everywhere to build disruptive technologies at reasonable cost. The inspiring story of global tech entrepreneur Kamran Elahian shows not only how world-changing technology can be built by anyone from anywhere, but how also going from failure to success can be a jo...
Jan 29, 2019•27 min
With 2019 well underway, our third and final Pitch Night in-between-isode should be helpful for founders busy planning their startup’s goals and milestones for the year. The subject is social impact and the positive business results it can deliver, from sales to talent acquisition, when done correctly. Corporate social responsibility has become a major concern in the world today. Customers want to patron companies that give back to their communities. In fact, a study from Deloitte found that 87 ...
Jan 15, 2019•16 min
We’re back with another special Pitch Night episode! This time, we’re exploring what successful tech disruption looks like in an industry not typically known for innovation or adoption of new technology: food and beverage, or F&B. Specifically, can technology show us how to pour a beer better? There’s far more at stake than maximizing the taste of your favorite brew. The average draft beer system delivers a surprisingly inefficient pour. About 30 percent of every keg is wasted on average, ad...
Jan 08, 2019•17 min
With the year coming to a close and the holiday season in full swing, we at Powderkeg wanted to give you something special in this episode of the Igniting Startups podcast. For any listeners who’ve never had the pleasure of attending one of our pitch nights, we thought it would be fun to give you a sense of what it’s like to be there in person. And we picked a very timely pitch to share: how disrupting computer science education can help fill the tech talent shortage, especially the demand for s...
Dec 18, 2018•14 min
Launching a tech product can be a very rocky road for a startup. Technical issues are common, and user feedback during the early days of rollout is often focused around bugs and glitches rather than the product’s core features. This makes it difficult for teams to hone in on what’s working and what isn’t, which can delay the process of reaching product-market fit. And this all wastes a startup’s most valuable resource: time. For these reasons, our guests on today’s episode of the Igniting Statup...
Dec 11, 2018•59 min
The U.S. tech industry is booming, but there’s a shortage of skilled talent to match all the new positions being created. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics have estimated there will be 1.4 million open computer science jobs in 2020 and only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them. That means anyone with tech skills such as coding will be in great demand for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, there are many ways to learn these skills besides the...
Dec 04, 2018•54 min
For decades, the communities to watch for the next batch of disruptive tech companies were along the coasts in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Boston. But that trend has started to change. Today, you’re just as likely to find the seeds of a billion-dollar startup in Cincinnati, Nashville, or Kansas City, and the venture capital industry is taking notice. Our first guest on today’s episode of the Igniting Startups podcast was among the earliest investors to see the potential in Midwester...
Nov 27, 2018•43 min
Starting a company is often a solitary journey. Until they have enough traction to hire their first employees, founders tend to spend much of their time working alone. A little support for a young startup can go a long way, and that’s where community initiatives and organizations can make a tremendous impact. Today’s episode of the Igniting Startups podcast takes an in-depth look at how one community empowers its local tech startups and entrepreneurs. Our two guests are Brynn Plummer and Clark B...
Nov 19, 2018•50 min
Building and scaling a company takes determination. It takes a team with an indomitable spirit who won’t take “no” for an answer. The same is true for tech communities. To grow and thrive, a community and all its members must display perseverance and confidence in the face of obstacles and hardship. In a word, rising tech communities need grit. The tech communities of Tennessee have grit in spades. In just the last decade, the cities of Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville have grown t...
Nov 14, 2018•1 hr 16 min
When you’re busy building an innovative tech company, your time is at a premium. Crucial concerns like developing your product and finding customers usually take center stage, making it easy to put off the more mundane matters of payroll and benefits for your employees. But ignoring these HR issues for too long could seriously hurt your startup when it comes time to scale up. Our two guests today have years of experience dealing with HR processes in startups and fully understand how important th...
Nov 08, 2018•52 min
Situated at the base of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Denver and Boulder have long been popular destinations for people in search of beautiful scenery, fresh air, good food and healthy living. And over the past decade, they’ve also become choice cities for entrepreneurs looking to build the next generation of innovative tech companies outside Silicon Valley. Bolstered by the influence of the global seed accelerator Techstars and the local presence of large corporations like Comcast, Amazon an...
Oct 30, 2018•1 hr 15 min
Diversity and inclusion are arguably the most important issues in tech culture right now. Companies on and between the coasts, from startups to global corporations, recognize more and more the positive impacts of improving diversity and inclusion. In fact, our tech censuses in Indianapolis and Cincinnati this year revealed that it’s the top-ranked social issue by members of both communities. Entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders are making efforts to honestly assess the state of diversi...
Oct 24, 2018•32 min
Building a mature, flourishing tech ecosystem is far from an easy task. It takes the unwavering dedication of many talented people over many years, and success is never a guarantee. But it can be done, and those working “in the trenches” of tech entrepreneurship can look to other communities that are a few steps ahead on this journey for guidance and inspiration. Cincinnati is one such community. Nestled along the Ohio River and close to the borders of Indiana and Kentucky, Cincinnati harbors a ...
Oct 16, 2018•1 hr 14 min
When tech startups use each other’s products and services, they give each other added opportunities to grow, and the entire startup community gets a lift. There’s good reason, then, for tech communities to support cross-selling between companies at the local, regional, and national level. Furthermore, there’s plenty that entrepreneurs, investors, and talent can do to help support this goal. Take our first guests on this episode, John Francis and Clay Gordon, the founding partners of Stout Street...
Oct 09, 2018•47 min
As we discussed in our opening episode of Season 2, raising money for your startup works differently between the coasts than it does in Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston. Non-coastal founders need to build strong relationships and prove their business model if they hope to secure funding, and they also need to understand what makes their particular community tick. Because as it turns out, not all heartland tech ecosystems are created equal. This is a fact that our two guests for today’s show k...
Sep 05, 2018•54 min
The data has shown that fundraising is a different kind of beast for Midwest-based startups. Unlike the investing scene in Silicon Valley, which is characterized by fierce competition and bullish investors, fundraising in the Midwest is grounded in a foundation of collaboration and strong relationships. There is funding out there for innovative, fast-growing tech companies in America’s heartland, but founders will struggle to secure it if they try to follow a coastal playbook. In this first epis...
Aug 21, 2018•49 min
If your startup has secured funding or you’re currently seeking it, then you may have heard about the importance of investors updates. Keeping your investors informed about what’s going on within the company helps them better advise you and can directly benefit your business in the long run. However, exactly when and how to do this can be a bit confusing for first-timers, so we’ve brought on two experienced guests for today’s show to clear up the particulars. Our first guest, Ari Newman, is a Pa...
Aug 14, 2018•39 min
No one likes the person at the conference or cocktail hour who’s only interested in promoting their company and handing out business cards. This shameless “networker” mentality will not only annoy everyone else in the room, but also hurt your business by burning bridges with potential collaborators. Fortunately, serial entrepreneur Scott Gerber is an expert on the other way to build business relationships—the way of the “connector.” Scott has based his whole career on business relationships and ...
Aug 08, 2018•52 min
If you want a tech community to grow, develop and thrive, it helps to know where it stands right now—how far it’s come, what advantages it has and what’s still holding it back. That’s exactly why Powderkeg teamed up with Raidious, an enterprise-grade digital marketing agency, and a slew of other organizations earlier this year to take the temperature of the tech community in our hometown of Indianapolis, IN. The results of our research were compiled in the first-ever Indianapolis Tech Census Rep...
Jul 31, 2018•59 min
Here at Powderkeg, we believe the rising remote work movement goes hand-in-hand with our mission to connect the amazing tech communities growing and thriving across the country. In a previous episode of the podcast, the CEO and COO of Indianapolis-based Formstack shared how they built an exceptional remote culture spanning seven countries. Today, serial entrepreneur Liam Martin joins us to share some remote work secrets of his own. Liam is no stranger to managing a remote team. As co-founder of ...
Jul 23, 2018•1 hr 4 min
Let’s face it: In the tech world, motherhood is often viewed as something undesirable. Many employers and professional women think that having children will distract them from work, decrease their productivity, and make them less effective leaders. But what if the opposite is true? What if working moms actually make some of the very best entrepreneurs, investors, and employees? This is the opinion of Sarah Lacy, a Silicon Valley tech journalist turned entrepreneur. After writing and editorial st...
Jun 26, 2018•40 min
And…we’re back! Powderkeg: Igniting Startups returns after a brief hiatus with something of an experiment ahead of season two of the podcast. (We’re calling it an “in-between-isode.”) This show features a Q&A-meets-pitch event featuring one veteran entrepreneur and two founders who are earlier in their journey and have exciting startups of their own. Our first guest is Scott Jones, a serial tech entrepreneur and investor who’s perhaps best known as the inventor of voicemail (yes, you read th...
May 15, 2018•48 min
Modern technology has made telecommuting and working remotely easier than ever before, opening the door for businesses to find and hire the best talent no matter where in the world they live. However, Chris Byers and Dustin Sapp will tell you that hiring the right people is only the first step; building an exceptional culture to support your remote team is equally important. Byers and Sapp are CEO and COO of Formstack, an Indianapolis tech company that provides easy-to-use, online form-building ...
Oct 24, 2017•54 min
Last Thursday was a huge day for the Indianapolis tech community. AOL co-founder Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest tour bus stopped by, and ten high-growth startups competed for a chance to win a cool $100,000. In the end, the grand prize went to the water-testing company 120WaterAudit. The company’s CEO, Megan Glover, was among our panel of guests on last week’s episode of the Powderkeg Podcast, which you can check out here if you missed it. Even though Rise of the Rest Indy is over, the founders w...
Oct 17, 2017•54 min
