The growth of the idea and understanding behind a startup can be a difficult task. Living and working the life of an entrepreneur in the startup world is really learning from mistakes, both your own and the mistakes others. So what's the secret to establishing a successful startup learning from mistakes? And how do know what realistic goals to set for improvement and growth when launching your startup? On today’s episode, we chat with Jeff Ready, a serial entrepreneur with years of experience as...
Oct 15, 2019•1 hr 15 min
It's been no surprise that ventures in FinTech have tripled in just this past year. According to recent research completed by data provider, CB Insights, venture capital-backed financial technology companies have raised an incredible record of $39.57 billion from investors globally in 2018, that’s up 120 percent from the previous year! The financial technology industry is trending worldwide with tons of open opportunities for entrepreneurs to take advantage of...so how can entrepreneurs and inno...
Oct 08, 2019•50 min
For today’s episode, we’re going back to where Matt spoke with Chris Heivly who is currently the VP of Innovation at Techstars. Chris is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, investor, and startup founder. And was one of the original Co-founders of MapQuest, a free Web and mobile mapping service that empowers consumers to engage with and navigate the world around them. This interview is from all the way back in November 2016, and we’re bringing it out of the archives because later this month on Octobe...
Oct 01, 2019•32 min
Hey there Powderkeg fans! Nick here from the Powderkeg team. This is episode 104 of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, the show for entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators building remarkable tech companies in areas outside of Silicon Valley. Today we’re revisiting an old episode where Matt spoke with Scott Hill. Scott is an entrepreneur and the Co-founder of PERQ. PERQ is an Indianapolis based high-growth marketing technology company that empowers businesses with more visibility into their digital ma...
Sep 24, 2019•41 min
Entrepreneurship and building a startup comes with a long list of challenges. Rewarding challenges, but unpleasant challenges nonetheless. Entrepreneurs, particularly first-timers, experience a whole list of startup challenges in their beginning years. A lot of them attempt to establish the brand, change and develop to match or surpass the competition, and try to be extremely profitable. And the challenges of starting a startup doesn’t stop just there. But it's possible to move past the challeng...
Sep 17, 2019•52 min
Successful start-ups go through several smaller milestones before they reach the first major financial milestone. These smaller milestones represent outcomes of smaller teams working on countless initiatives that help reach the ultimate milestone. It’s always beneficial to let your team know how their contributions and efforts fit into the bigger picture. Having a culture of transparency and that emphasizes your team's relevance and criticality of their work helps leads to the overall financial ...
Sep 10, 2019•46 min
This is episode 101 of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, the show for entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators building remarkable tech companies in areas outside of Silicon Valley. Today we’re revisiting an old episode where Matt spoke with Sarah Lacy. Sarah is a serial entrepreneur and a longtime journalist, founder of tech news site Pando Media, and founder of Chairman Mom, which launched in 2018. The interview is from March 2018, and we’re bringing it out of the archives because it’s one of our fa...
Sep 03, 2019•39 min
Leaders that are able to build and create a culture of openness and collaboration are able to encourage their team to better self-develop, communicate, and share what they are learning so they can capitalize on the actions they are or could be doing better, and promoting and pushing one another to do the same. But where do we begin in order to create and maintain this idea that we call product culture? On today’s episode, we chat with Marcus Cobb, a technologist, product designer, public speaker...
Aug 27, 2019•48 min
Today we’re bringing back an episode from a LIVE Powderkeg event in Nashville, Tennessee in November 2018 where we unpacked the data from the Tennessee Tech Census. The recording features 6 local tech leaders as they discuss the main findings about the grit - and growth - of the tech community across Tennessee. We’re re-releasing this episode because later this month, Launch Tennessee, one of our partners on the Tech Census, is hosting their annual 36|86 Entrepreneurship Festival. 36|83 brings t...
Aug 20, 2019•1 hr 12 min
Having the right talent acquisition process can give tech companies the upper hand to attract the most highly skilled and best culture-fit talent on the market. Creating an employer brand that aligns with your talent strategy can help attract top talent, and in exchange, lead to better performance and outcomes. But have you ever had a hard time trying to find the right person for a key position in your company? You’re not alone. A recent study done by Korn Ferry found that almost 60% of employer...
Aug 13, 2019•13 min
Hey there Powderkeg fans! Nick here from the Powderkeg team. This is episode 97 of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, the show for entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators building remarkable tech companies in areas outside of Silicon Valley. Today we’re revisiting an old episode where Matt spoke with Scott Gerber. He’s the co-founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) and The Community Company, and he’s spent nearly a decade helping entrepreneurs and global brands alike intelligently grow their n...
Aug 06, 2019•49 min
Delivering an impressive customer experience requires influencing the customers’ perception of your company. These perceptions affect their behaviors and build memories and feelings to drive their loyalty. If they walk out from the interaction with your team feeling like their wants and needs weren’t met, then they’ll associate those negative perceptions with your company forever... and likely never return. In other words: if customers like you and continue to like you, they are going to continu...
Jul 30, 2019•48 min
The race to having the ultimate customer experience is on! Companies are recognizing the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out from the competition. According to a study done by Gartner, 89% of companies today are now competing on the basis of positive customer experience. But in order to create this positive experience, you have to ask the questions your customers would ask themselves: Are you blown away by the performance of the product? Are you happy with the attent...
Jul 23, 2019•48 min
Today we’re revisiting an old episode where Matt spoke with Haresh Gangwani, co-founder and CEO of Bolstra, a customer experience company based here in Indianapolis as well as Don Aquilano, co-founder and managing partner at Allos Ventures, a Venture Capital firm that invests in high-potential, early-stage tech companies in the heart of the Midwest. The interview is from all the way back in July 2017, almost 2 years to the day. We’re bringing this one back around because it’s a great insight int...
Jul 16, 2019•46 min
Today we’re revisiting an old episode where Matt spoke with Alicia Syrett, founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital, a seed and early-stage angel investment firm based in New York. However, you might know her better from her appearances on CNBC’s Power Pitch or MSNBC’s Your Business. The interview is from all the way back in April 2017. We’re bringing this one back around because her advice for when, why, and how to raise capital is as useful and relevant today as it was then. In fact, with capital...
Jul 09, 2019•56 min
If you’ve seen any of the buzz that’s been circulating the internet the last few years, you might think that tech company culture is all about catered lunches, ping pong tables and allowing dogs in the office. (Which totally misses the mark, but more on that later.) So does this mean that every company that has these perks has a great culture, or that more traditionally structured companies will never have a positive culture? Not at all! Having a great company culture has a lot more to do with t...
Jul 02, 2019•19 min
The tech industry is growing rapidly. But there’s a shortage of skilled talent to match all the new positions being created. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has estimated that by 2026, careers in software development will increase by 24%. Which translates to a lot of open career opportunities in tech. Fortunately, there are many ways for people to learn these skills such as following the traditional path of a college. But for some, going to college isn’t an option – it’s expensive, it takes years...
Jun 25, 2019•53 min
Product teams solve problems — problems that have never been solved. Therefore, product management teams must be extremely skilled in order to come up with great solutions to solve greater problems. Unfortunately, there is no tried and proven formula that can ensure higher performing teams. Different companies use different approaches, but knowing what has worked in the past can help business leaders build a successful team with a positive culture. On today’s episode of Igniting Startups, you’ll...
Jun 18, 2019•52 min
There is one problem that most entrepreneurs seem to face: a lack of funding to start their business. Regardless of whether you are working on an MVP in a garage, or writing code for an app in a local cafe, raising capital is never easy. But once you have raised the capital you need, how do you create and build a skilled team to reach your mission? And how do you build the right type of company culture, one that makes every team member inspired to collaborate and do their best work? In this epis...
Jun 11, 2019•49 min
What is a marketplace business, and how does that model impact each aspect of a company’s strategy? How do you choose the right business model to succeed in a market-place driven world? In today’s episode, we talked with Robert Preville, an expert on marketplace businesses, serial entrepreneur, and investor that has founded and led several high-growth companies. Robert is the founder and CEO of Kwipped, a B2B marketplace platform headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina that matches businesse...
Jun 04, 2019•44 min
#87: How To Create A Successful Venture Studio With Diversity And Mindfulness by Powderkeg
May 28, 2019•49 min
Today’s episode is a recording of a live fireside chat with two amazing guests who flew in from the Valley and Portland, Maine to be here. This is the third of our Innovation Series in partnership with Kenzie Academy, a design and coding school right here in Indianapolis, Indiana. Before we begin the discussion with our guests, Chok Ooi, the founder of Kenzie Academy introduces the brand new General Manager of Kenzie Academy, Danielle McDowell. Chok and Danielle will update us on the amazing thi...
May 21, 2019•53 min
Find out how practicing mindfulness (one of our Powderkeg core values) can help you in business and life. Jenny Blake, author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, explains how she has managed multiple pivots in her career and in business through mindfulness practices.
May 14, 2019•49 min
Kara Nortman is the co-founder of Seedling and partner at Upfront Ventures. In this interview she recounts her evolution as a creative child from an adventurous family, to her role as a partner in the largest and most tenured venture capital fund in Los Angeles. Armed with an AB in Politics and an MBA from Stanford, Kara Nortman found herself the only person from business school attending a C++ class when she interned at Microsoft more than a decade ago. Before that, she delved deep into esoteri...
May 07, 2019•44 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...
Apr 30, 2019•1 hr
Last week on the show, we heard some insight into what a tight-knit company culture looks like. This week we will be getting some insight on how a company can preserve this culture on a large scale. On today’s episode of Powderkeg Igniting Startups, we welcome three entrepreneurs and human resources specialists to share how they get companies ready to expand, and how they keep culture thriving as the company grows. First we have Co-Founder of Analytic.li Jana Fuelberth. She originally started in...
Apr 23, 2019•48 min
Startups consider countless opportunities before getting a strong foothold in their market. They look for what products their audience wants, and why they don’t have it already. A lot of time can be spent researching, building and figuring the best course for product development. In the end the people making all these new ideas possible deserve a little recognition as well. This is where company culture comes into play. On this episode of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups we have Jason Price, Co-Foun...
Apr 16, 2019•42 min
Share before you’re ready. Leaders learn the answer. In this episode of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, you’ll meet Max Yoder making his third appearance on the podcast. As the CEO of Lessonly, a rapidly scaling tech company in Indianapolis, Max views his job as helping people flourish, thrive and understand themselves. In this conversation Max shares his learnings as a founder and breaks down some of the core principles of his newest book, “Do Better Work.” The mantras and habits that he shares a...
Apr 09, 2019•44 min
One of the most valuable experiences that entrepreneurs can learn from is the mistake that cost another entrepreneur their dream. Whether you’re building your first company or your tenth, entrepreneurship is full of uncertainty. And while success is always the goal, there are a thousand valuable lessons in startup failure. On today’s episode of the podcast you’ll hear from three serial entrepreneurs about the biggest mistakes to avoid when building a startup. First, you’ll meet Michael Cloran. T...
Apr 02, 2019•43 min
Networking is similar to a contact sport like football, soccer or basketball. If you don’t really put in the work, then you might as well stay on the sideline. Building a network can be a little intimidating -- whether you are just starting out, navigating a career change or are even mid-career and just need a boost. On today’s episode of Powderkeg: Igniting Startups, you’ll learn from two serial entrepreneurs that built entire networks full of career-changing relationships, all by using some re...
Mar 26, 2019•54 min
