“Everything-but-the-Kitchen-Sink” Prairie

What's in a Name?

“Silicon Prairie” was the old namesake for those attempting to promote the Midwest as a hotbed of innovative, original startup activity. Well, maybe 15 years hence, they got the easy part right—look around and there’s usually some Prairie. The problem is that the word Silicon is just too limiting for the exciting things that are happening here in the Midwest.

The Venture Reality Show

These comments come soon after attending the 2009 Venture Idol contest put on annually by the Venture Club of Indiana and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. This is my second Venture Idol competition after semi-retiring here in the Midwest back from Silicon Valley with an interim stop in Dallas, Texas. One thing is clear after this year’s event; the competition is escalating. The collection of companies represented in this year’s event far exceeded the quality and maturity I observed last year. I don’t say this as a casual observer, as over the last week I have been able to have dinner and/or meet at the offices of many of the most promising companies in this year’s competition.

The first encounter was at the Venture Club luncheon held at the Indiana Historical Society. There at my table I crossed paths again with David Corcoran, CEO of TrustBearer Labs. David and his team are focused on extending high-integrity, multi-level security across a wide range of networks and devices at a value level not seen in other implementations. TrustBearer has made significant progress with a set of high profile customers and partners. Look for them to have a breakout year in 2009.

Two more early stage companies were at my table at the Indiana Entrepreneurial Awards at the Indiana Roof Ballroom and sponsored by Indiana University’s Kelly School of Business Johnson Center for Entrepreneurial Development and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. The companies were both located in West Lafayette, with connections to Purdue University and located in their highly successful Purdue Research Park on the north side of town. The first company is Nanovis, represented at the Venture Idol competition by their COO, Matt Hedrick. Matt explained in layman’s terms how their nanostructured surface technology helps artificial joints and other implants integrate into the body’s tissue and bone structure. Their nanostructures give the normally smooth, metal surfaces of an implant the “look and feel” of the bone or other structure—innovative and beneficial to the patient and an initiative that could lead to enormous financial success for Nanovis.

The second company out of West Lafayette is much more hush-hush. The company name is Knowrtal (pronounced nohr-tl, like portal). As the name suggests they are building a social expert knowledge portal utilizing advanced artificial intelligence, correlation and sharing techniques seldom found outside the depths of the government intelligence agencies. The idea is that you can, via your profile, contribute advanced algorithms, spreadsheet macros, VB code, etc. into the social network and these individual tidbits of knowledge will be categorized, cross-correlated and combined so that over time the combined knowledge that a participant can extract in any expert field is exponentially greater than the sum of the tidbits. Granted, the concept is a somewhat hard to grasp, but most pioneering technologies are. It will be interesting to see how Knowrtal develops.

The Real Thing

The final example of the high quality startup companies located here in Indiana comes out of Greenwood, just south of Indianapolis. It was there, in a humble office, where I met with Jeff Ready, the CEO of Scale Computing. Jeff is one of the many Hoosier serial entrepreneurs, which after a couple of successes, decided to relocate back in the Midwest. Jeff and his team are split between Greenwood and San Carlos, California located on the northern border of Silicon Valley startup and, as can be expected from a seasoned team, they have lofty goals, not the least of which is to knock global storage king, EMC (revenue of $13.2B in ’07) from its throne. Now before you laugh, catch yourself as you are likely wrong. Scale Computing is using grid computing techniques to provide an incremental growth path utilizing low cost memory “bricks” at an end user cost that is 80% less than the nearest competitor. As is often the case, startups excel when they can catch a big company sleeping at the wheel. Let’s see if Scale Computing can pull it off; but as they say, “If I was a betting man…” proper. Jeff and his cohorts are now working on their third.

And the Winner Is?

So a great stable of startups this year; but you know, the funny thing is that none of the above is my pick as #1. That is because the #1 slot goes to a company not in Indiana, but nearby in Champaign, Illinois. But that’s a subject for another posting.

Until then, here’s to your (startup) business success!