DeveloperTown

Picture yourself in the shoes of Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, or any of the other hundreds of NFL players that have stepped out onto the field at the Lucas Oil Stadium. Instead of donning a helmet, pads, and a jersey to play football, you’re preparing to pitch your company to a national audience. On October 18th, you could get the chance to step up to the mic and pitch your startup to 500+ entrepreneurs, developers, and other creatives at the Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the most recent Superbowl!

PowderKeg Information

The PowderKeg is a two and a half day conference from October 17th to 19th that is being put on by Verge. Events include the Entrepreneur’s Unleashed Panel (with Connections 2012), a Startup Showcase and Exhibition at The Crane Bay, and a closing party at DeveloperTown and the Speak Easy!

About the Pitch Bowl

On the afternoon of October 18th, 10 companies will have the chance to compete in the Pitch Bowl in front of the 500+ PowderKeg attendees. Pitches will be limited to 5 minutes, with an additional 5-10 minute Q&A session after. One lucky winner will walk away with a startup growth package (specifics to be determined). As an added bonus, all 10 startups will be able to attend the lunch before the Pitch Bowl starts. There will be $15,000 in cash and prizes to go out to the competitors!

Applications are due on September 28th, and the 10 startups that are selected will be notified by October 5th.

Click here to apply!

Any questions can be sent to lsaxton@developertown.com.

This time last year, I was starting a company called 3 Thumbs Up. We weren’t at the phase where we wanted to raise much money, but we wanted to get exposure and, more importantly, see people’s reaction to our product. So when the Innovation Showcase came to town, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to grab a spot to pitch our idea. Here’s a summary of what transpired, and what you may be able to expect as an entrepreneur this year.

1. Get Setup

It’s simple. You have a table. You have power. The rest is up to you! Come prepared.

2. Meet More of “You”

Between talking to people at our booth and keeping myself hydrated (it was “a little” hot that day), I somehow found time to talk to other entrepreneurs. And boy, there were a lot of us! That, in itself, may have been the best opportunity of the day. Set aside time before the event gears up (i.e. as you set up) to chat with the others around you.

3. Pitch

Everyone gets a shot at a 1 minute pitch. Thankfully, I was the first to go! No expectations and I didn’t have to wait in line for an hour to pitch. I spent a few hours honing my pitch that morning. Expect to do the same. It’s not easy to deliver a summary of your baby in 60 seconds.

4. Stand Out

We were on the cheap and didn’t have a banner. Many tables had fancy banners and posters. We had a computer to demo our app, and…beer! We homebrewed, bottled, and labeled 50  ”3 Thumbs Up” summer ales to give away at the showcase. I saved the last 5 seconds of my 1 minute pitch to exclaim, “If you want a homebrew, head our way!” This didn’t lead to the big check being written, but it sure made the event fun! Find a way to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

5. Talk, talk, and then talk some more

You will repeat the same thing about six thousand times that night. I effectively lost my voice after an hour. And the event was 5 hours long! Keep yourself hydrated and well-fed, because there won’t be much time to concern yourself with these things as you try to catch people, talk to them, sign them up, and steal their money (kidding).

6. Experiment with your Pitch

On the other hand, the excessive talking opens up the opportunity to experiment with your pitch. Over the course of several hours, I tried reworking my pitch while noting the emotional response of the recipient. If nothing else, this kept me sane! Think about your pitch throughout the night. Don’t turn into a broken record.

7. Set Expectations

Why are you at the Showcase? Startups come for a variety of reasons. Some are legitimately seeking investment dollars. Others want to connect with investors in case they need to raise money. Still others just want to make a public appearance with their startup. Why are you there? It’s unlikely you’ll walk away with a check, but expect to make connections and follow up after the event.

Good luck! Excited to see you there.

Would you like to have been there when Bill Gates first met Paul Allen in the formative stages of Microsoft? When David Packard met William Hewlett in the very early years of “Silicon Valley?”  When Captain Reynolds first met Zoe as Independents? Probably not the first two, because that would likely make you even older than me. But think of the possible encounters when you get an energized group of smart, motivated, hard-working, and talented people in the same space for a day. That is the potential of the Innovation Showcase.

Why is this a cool and signature event for Central Indiana and the Midwest? I could give the Top 10 reasons, but that would exceed recommended, re-tweetable guidelines (is that a word?) so I will stick to the Top 3.

First, the Innovation Showcase is just the kind of event that entrepreneurs and investors need to connect with each other, and it is happening here. Founders need help—period. While some may tell you it is just about money, it is much more than that. They need feedback on their ideas, connections to people who can help with technical hurdles, and best of all some direct feedback from possible customers on their ideas or MVPs (minimally viable products). Investors need deal flow, and some basis of comparison for whether the ventures they are seeing are the wheat—or the chaff. The Showcase gets a critical mass of constituents together to accomplish the above.

Second, it showcases the spirit of public/private cooperation and general collaboration that makes INDIANA a fantastic place to network, share ideas, and learn. Lots of events around the country become subject to bureaucrats, turf wars, and empire builders. Gatherings become about who gets credit—not how they meaningfully help the key constituents, namely current and future founders, current and future investors, and idea people in general. Indy has a wonderful community of individuals and organizations, including founders who have been successful; up-and-comers with great ideas and passion; universities with incredible intellectual richness and technical resources; and government employees and not-for-profits doing good work helping all of the above. Don’t underestimate the power of hard work and collaboration in such a community!

Third, the location rocks. DeveloperTown and The Speak Easy embody the best of what the Indy venture scene has become. With its open stadium feel, individualized “houses” for developers and others, and flexible use of space, the

location speaks to the desire of the innovator to have privacy for inspiration and easy access to collaboration—in the same place.  This location has become a hub for Verge, idea people, and others to advance their fledgling concepts, and is likely to be a place people will point to for years to come as the spawning ground for many big successes. See the picture below of the original garage that housed Hewlett and Packard, and a typical DT Developer house next to it. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

One of my areas of research is the role of “venture advocate behaviors” in the launch and success of new firms. Contrary to the popular press, successful entrepreneurs rarely “go it alone;” they have a cadre of advisors, mentors, and advocates who help them develop their ideas and connect to resources including employees, customers, and funding. The Innovation Showcase is a great example of a vehicle for these key elements in a successful venture community. OK, so maybe it’s not South by Southwest yet…but we are getting closer. Come see the next generation of business leaders and ideas collide—and you will be able to look back and say, “I was there when…”

Todd Saxton is an Associate Professor at the IU Kelley School of Business, the Indiana Venture Faculty Fellow, and the Director of the DIVE program (Discovery, Innovation, and Ventures Enterprise). He teaches strategy and entrepreneurship at Kelley’s Evening MBA program in Indy and the online Kelley Direct MBA program.

…that might be a bit hyperbolic…but it definitely changed the trajectory of my life by exposing me to a world that I had no idea existed…

A spectator of the Innovation Showcase 2011:

Last Year around this time, I was going through some life changes. I had been working as a technical lead over a Microsoft .net project and was in the process of transitioning back into a consultant world. Technically, I felt myself being pulled more into the UI/UX/psychology of the users when building applications as opposed to the infrastructure and backend services that I had gravitated towards earlier in my journey. Most importantly, I was only corporate by day, and an aspiring bootstrap entrepreneur releasing my second private alpha of a bootstrapped venture every other waking moment.

I had been pursuing full-time entrepreneurship for about 3 years at that point. Being an aspiring entrepreneur surrounded by factory-style-employee-minded leadership, I felt like an outcast. Only able to rely on my closest family to tolerate my dream-like goals, and leaning on a few close friends who share a similar thirst for “drawing our own map” for reassurance of my sanity. I looked for inspirational stories, entrepreneurship guidance, and starter/linchpin engagement in places like Palo Alto, Chicago, and New York. I hadn’t focused on the Indy scene that much simply because I, foolishly, didn’t think it was very useful way to spend my time. My plan was to build my applications out as much as I could here, and move out to a “real entrepreneurship city” for a few years to take it to the next level. Then, I would finally come back here to raise my family, and try to bring that entrepreneurial spirit back with me.

Then the veil of darkness, that I had unintentionally shrouded myself with, started to have holes poked through it. I heard about a little company doing some big things in the venture technology space…a space that employs a philosophy that resonates with me and I had been evangelizing for years (basically the best way to build quality software, by having all parties having a serious amount of skin in the game, so every decision is made with the motive of making the venture successful). Then I heard that this small group of townies was one of the sponsors of and was hosting a big event with a catchy name…

“Innovation Showcase” ohhhhh ahhhhh, sounds all edgy doesn’t it… One of my best friends was going to be presenting his venture, and my interest in the townies was peaking, so I figured I’d stop by after work the day of this showcase, and stay for a few minutes just to check it all out and show support. I didn’t set my hopes too high, because little old Indy wasn’t capable of holding an event for true members of the startup tribe right? Yeah…well, you have to see and experience it to believe it.

My name badge from last year made it onto my garage fridge.I pull up to this old Broad Ripple warehouse, and it is packed…I’m talking I had to park a couple of blocks away packed. So, I make the trek back to the place with all of the hubbub. As soon as I walked through the doors, I immediately felt at home. The entrepreneurial spirit was palpable. The excitement was electrifying, and all of the misconceptions about the lack of starter energy of this great city, melted away in a flash. Every booth, hell, every step you took, you saw true to life innovation. Real businesses…some with very niche ideas, some with world changing aspirations, all of which were beaming with pride, all together. As I said, I didn’t even know this world existed here, so for the first part of it, I walked through mesmerized, letting it all soak in and overheard snippets of conversations in which people are quoting ideologies of some of my startup idols and books that I thought only us ‘crazies’ read. They not only knew about this tribe I had been wanting people to resonate with, but they were actually implementing the techniques that, up to that point, I had either only read about or was just beginning to experience myself. Agile, lean, ReWork, social, permission marketing, virality, Linchpins, mesh markets…this was a petri-dish of all things awesome. I thought there were just a few misguided startup souls wandering the city…I couldn’t have been more wrong…literally hundreds of these bright-eyed and bushy tailed starters, gathered in one space, building each other up, for the sole purpose of increasing each others passions.

So, once that seal was cracked open, I’ll be damned if there wasn’t even more badassery going on right under my nose. Whether it be blogs like Talentopoly, meetup after meetup, or full-fledged initiatives like The SpeakEasy, Verge, or TechPoint all gathering together the best and brightest to bring Indy to it’s rightful place on the world-wide startup map.

Bottom line, I had finally found my tribe…and as crazy as it seems, it was right smack dab in the middle of the city in which I was born and raised!

So, a year later…how is my life different…how did this little event change my personal and professional trajectory. It would take many more pages to really chronicle to the transformation I have undergone since my exposure to the Indy startup scene. I think the best way to summarize it is to say “I found home” (a home (little blue and black house) within a home (the big warehouse I referred to earlier) actually…I can now be found hacking away at DeveloperTown). It turns out there is a family of these like-minded folks that I can’t believe I was oblivious to…and even though the technical fit wasn’t all of the way there, I still pursued it. From a technical perspective I have gone from not much exposure to Unix-based systems to using a MBP as my primary tool for creating and even feeling comfortable with the terminal…from a Microsoft staticly-tyed language guy to a Ruby on Rails-ite, from dreaming about how the future of app dev is in the mobile space to writing and shipping iOS and Android apps…but, by far most importantly, from not knowing how Bad Ass our city really is, to being a member of one of the most Bad Assed teams I could imagine and surrounded by that startup energy everyday!