Innovate IndianaNews and information on how IU is driving innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development

Shoebox Fund makes two new investments in student-led innovation

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

IU-led fund invests in smartphone app for new music discovery and battery part supplier targeting the electric vehicle market

Two more student startups have been selected to benefit from the Shoebox Fund, an investment fund that supports student innovation at Indiana University.

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg

Established earlier this year through a gift of $60,000 from Donna and John Shoemaker, the Shoebox Fund supports companies to emerge from the Shoebox, the student startup incubator at Shoemaker Innovation Center at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering in Bloomington. The fund is administered by the school in partnership with IU Ventures, which leads IU’s investment in high-potential new venture opportunities with strong university connections.

The startups, which each received a total of $5,000, are:

HotDrop, a smartphone app to that helps users discover and share new music founded by Max Goldberg and Steven Segel, both juniors at the IU Kelley School of Business in Bloomington.

Natrion, an electric-vehicle battery part supplier founded by Thomas Rouffiac, a sophomore at the IU Kelley School of Business in Bloomington.

HotDrop

HotDrop, which is available for download in the Apple and Google Play stores, plays 30 seconds of a random song, then lets users swipe left or right to indicate their like or dislike. Users can swipe up to share the song or down to add the song to a streaming app. According to the app’s creators, HotDrop’s mission is “to spread the emotion of discovering new music and reliving old favorites. We empower a community of Gen Z listeners to discover, share and experience music together, picking the stars of tomorrow.”

In the first six weeks after launch, the HotDrop app saw over 20,000 users from more than 40 different countries swipe through about 1.5 million songs. Nearly 35,000 songs have been added to users’ Apple Music and Spotify libraries. In addition to the support of the Shoebox, the company recently closed a “significant” round of pre-seed financing, enabling the team to expand to 10 members, as well as support product development and marketing.

Steven Segel
Steven Segel

“The Shoebox Fund is a fantastic opportunity for young innovators to come together and build the valuable companies of tomorrow,” said Goldberg. “We’ve received fantastic mentorship from [the Shoebox team], and immaculate workplaces, legal resources and talented students have all been made readily available to HotDrop. We’ve also developed life-long friendships within the IU entrepreneurial community. We’re proud to be an active client of The Shoebox.”

Natrion

A part supplier focused on the component of a battery that allows electrical current to flow between the anode and the cathode, Natrion aims to address two key bottlenecks preventing the widespread implementation of clean energy. First, the company provides a “plug-and-play” solution that lithium-ion battery manufacturers can implement immediately into their production processes. Second, it uses a technology agnostic component that improves battery durability and thermal stability so that original equipment manufacturers can utilize new ultra-energetic materials allowing electric vehicle makers to double their range.

Thomas Rouffiac

“The members of the Shoebox Fund and mentors like (Shoemaker Innovation Center Executive Director) Travis Brown and (Shoebox Client Manager) Joe Rahaim, among others, have been incredibly helpful in walking me through ideas, scenarios and generally understanding what to prioritize in terms of next steps,” said Rouffiac. “This mentorship has also allowed us as a company to find new resources, funding opportunities and research collaborations that we otherwise wouldn’t have known about.”

Rouffiac said that Natrion is on track to close a $1.25 million seed round by the end of the year. This year, the company has also received small business research grants from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy, and it is completing pilot projects with IM3NY, Renault and Hyundai that are expected to lead to factory pilots with General Motors, Ford and 24M.

“The Shoebox Fund was created in partnership with IU Ventures to support student entrepreneurs at Indiana University as they work to launch their product,” said Travis J. Brown, senior executive assistant dean of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization and director of the Shoemaker Innovation Center and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at the Luddy School. “HotDrop and Natrion are a reflection of the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem we have built at IU, including the Shoebox, which is the increasingly popular incubation program provided through the Shoemaker Innovation Center. I’m confident that both teams are poised for success, and these investments ensure that we will be positioned to support the development of their startup beyond their time as students.”

Kevin Fryling, a senior communications consultant at IU Studios, was the lead contributor on this story.

IU expertise, connections and funding capital are energizing Bloomington’s innovation and startup culture

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Ten years ago, Ravi Bhatt considered his college town of Bloomington, Ind., when he was deciding where to locate his promising new business venture. He loved Bloomington, and equally adored his alma mater, Indiana University. In the end, though, he chose Chicago, believing that the Windy City offered the best mix of talent, infrastructure and, perhaps most importantly, safety net to set his idea in motion.

Chicago was the catalyst Bhatt hoped it would be. But a decade later, he is back living and working in Bloomington as the co-founder and CEO of Folia, a fast-emerging company that is helping modern enterprises streamline their research, analysis and idea generation practices. One of its leading products is iAnnotate, an award-winning annotation product that allows users to read, mark up and share documents on a tablet. Folia currently serves more than 1 million people daily—from students and teachers to top Wall Street investors, lawyers and even Hollywood screenwriters.

Ravi Bhatt
Ravi Bhatt, co-founder and CEO of Folia, has plans to expand his team roster from five to 40 Bloomington-based employees.

Bhatt, who has a degree in cognitive science from IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences, has returned to Bloomington to write the next chapter of his company’s success story. He has plans to significantly expand Folia’s team roster, which currently includes five Bloomington-based employees, to 40 local employees with expertise in, among other fields, computer science, cognitive science, business and communications. (Folia also has 15 additional employees who work across three other cities.) He’s also hoping to add new tools and services to the company’s portfolio to meet the evolving annotation needs of his customers.

What’s more, he’s excited to help enhance Bloomington’s reputation as an incubator for early-stage startups and to continue to partner in this branding effort with IU, which he credits with helping to transform his hometown into a hub for business growth. Key to this development, he says, has been the talent, mentorship, connections, funding and other key resources IU and its local partners have made available to entrepreneurs seeking to fully leverage their university affiliation.

“In 2010-2011, we looked closely at Bloomington, but while the city had a decent talent pool, the infrastructure just wasn’t there yet,” Bhatt says. “What a difference a decade makes, though. And so much of that difference is because a lot of people at Indiana University have put a lot of hard work, innovative ideas and relationship-building into helping businesses like mine unlock their potential.”

As he looked to take the next step in growing his business, while also considering the needs of a new family, including a wife and two young children (now ages 3 and 6), Bhatt started to engage with the team at IU Ventures, which assists IU students, faculty, staff and alumni in work that advances high-potential new venture opportunities. Through his conversations with Vice President for Venture Development Jason Whitney and other members of the IU Ventures team, he was introduced to the rapidly expanding IU Angel Network and its successful members spanning IU’s global community of alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends. He also learned about several new academic programs at IU focused on the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation; new funding opportunities such as the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, which aims to bridge the gap in startup funding by making equity investments in high-potential early-stage companies with IU affiliations; and key developments adjacent to the university, such as The Mill, which has become the largest coworking space in central Indiana for startups and entrepreneurs.

When it came time to make his next big personal and professional move, Bhatt had two cities in his sights: Seattle, which typically is found at the top of Forbes’ list of “Best Places for Business and Careers,” and Bloomington. This time, Bhatt chose Bloomington, and he hasn’t looked back.

“I give a lot of credit to IU and IU Ventures, which have not only put together programs to help businesses like mine quickly develop, but are also helping those businesses access key academic programs at IU that are generating talent and ideas,” Bhatt says. “They’re also helping emerging entrepreneurs tap the knowledge of industry experts, discover potential funding channels and make connections with like-minded people. Then there is the important innovation work happening on the perimeter of the university of places like The Mill, which also contains a lot of IU DNA.”

Bhatt says Bloomington has addressed one of its greatest challenges in the decade that he was away. With the help of IU, The Mill and other organizations, it has built a strong “safety net” for emerging entrepreneurs.

“The biggest problem we saw 10 years ago was that, if this business we are launching goes under, well I don’t know that there’s another job in this market. But that’s no longer the case. For young entrepreneurs—but also mid-level and even senior business leaders—there are enough talented people and other quality resources here that if you fail, you can dust yourself off and try again. Now you have people asking themselves, ‘Is this a good place to fail? Because, clearly, it’s a great place to succeed.'”

Busting myths and building a brand in the world of professional gaming

After several decades traveling the world and consulting for major U.S. and European companies, Jeff Thinnes has also recently found himself back home in Indiana. An Indianapolis native and graduate of IU’s Maurer School of Law, Thinnes sold his family house of 22 years and came to Bloomington to launch his new business, SummaForte, a company that produces health and wellness products to assist professional gamers, traditional athletes and others with their performance and recovery. He founded the company with his then-25-year-old son Murtagh, a graduate of IU’s Kelley School of Business.

Jeff Thinnes
Hoosier native Jeff Thinnes, co-founder and CEO of Summaforte, recently sold his family home of 22 years to launch a successful startup in Bloomington focused on healthy e-sports and gaming.

SummaForte, which focuses on developing science-driven products that equip customers with the health benefits of CBD and other nutrients, has nearly closed its $2 million seed round of funding. The funding round has been led by a $460,000 investment by the IU Angel Network, the network’s largest investment to date and its second investment in the company. In 2020, the network invested $35,000 in the company, which was still operating in “stealth mode” and preparing for its first beta product launch.

Upon his return to Bloomington, one of the first people Jeff Thinnes met was Jason Whitney, who quickly recognized the potential of the company to positively impact the rapidly growing world of esports, the company’s initial target market segment. Whitney began to envision ways IU Ventures could engage its network of alumni in furthering the company’s marketing, fundraising and business development efforts.

“The world of competitive esports has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years,” Whitney says. “With that, you have professional gamers who are suffering from very real injuries, inflammation and fatigue from extended use of their muscles and ligaments.

“Our alumni have come up with innovative healthy solutions to address these issues, and they have quickly reached several milestones, including designing and making products and creating a network of experienced partners such as leading scientists and physicians. These developments attracted the attention of our Angel Network investors, who have seen how effective the company’s products are in enabling peak athletic performance and recovery and can easily envision the strong potential for the company to be a leader, first in the esports and gaming industry and then in other tangential markets.”

Thinnes knew that his experience as an international lawyer, business consultant and professor, as well as his numerous global connections, would be valuable for SummaForte’s future. Nevertheless, he knew it would also be important to partner with people with expertise in the startup world, which he admits is a relatively new frontier for him.

“One of the things I love about being in a startup is that you are constantly confronted with new challenges begging for creative solutions,” he says. “And having a broad network to tap into means you aren’t alone—there’s an abundance of helpful experience and insights out there. It’s invigorating. Connections have led to more connections, and soon we are meeting people active in our markets as funders, partners, customers, etc. The IU connection has really helped us extend the perimeter of or our network.”

As he and his son continue to expand their business, he is also determined to “bust” several myths, including that “you can’t be healthy in e-sports” and that “you can’t start a business as a family.”

He’s also determined to make new hires, introduce them to Bloomington and integrate them into a community that has showered his company with support and continues to strengthen its startup culture, as well as its reputation as a rising tech city.

Picture of SummaTape
Summaforte’s CBD products, such as Summatape, are designed to support greater flexibility and facilitate faster recovery for gamers and e-sports players. Photo courtesy of Summaforte.

“It wasn’t a blind hunch to launch here [in Bloomington], since we are both alumni, but our wildest expectations have been exceeded by the support from the university and Bloomington community,” Thinnes says. “It was a big move to sell the family house of 22 years and come to Bloomington to launch this business, but it was definitely the right decision.”

Dedicated to an economically successful future

Thinnes and Ravi Bhatt are members of The Mill, and, as such, share a workspace that has served as a launching pad for numerous other successful startups. The Mill consists of 19,000 square feet of renovated, 100-year-old factory space in Bloomington’s downtown Trades District and is home to hundreds of members and dozens of companies.

Pat East has run The Mill since it launched in November 2018. Since that time, The Mill has become the fastest-growing co-working space in the state, and East has led a number of specialized initiatives to provide budding entrepreneurs with funding, pitching and mentoring support to accelerate their ideas and technologies into business concepts.

East is passionate about working closely with IU, one of three “cornerstone” sponsors of The Mill, and other partners in turning Bloomington into a recognized startup incubator and one of the Midwest’s leading centers for new technology and other innovation.

“The local efforts from the city of Bloomington have really spurred economic development in a meaningful way, starting with The Mill,” East says. “Their top-to-bottom renovation of a century-old furniture factory is a fantastic resource for the community, and it’s a tangible way to show entrepreneurs, ‘this is how we support you.’

“And even more important than the building, as great as it is, are the people inside of it. IU and IU Ventures have been huge supporters of The Mill since day zero. Before the building was even open, they believed in our mission to launch and accelerate startups and knew that one plus one equals three if we worked together. Since opening, we’ve co-invested several times, helping to invest more startups dollars in this region in the last two years than in the last decade.”

IU Ventures logo
IU Ventures is helping emerging businesses like Folia and Summaforte succeed and expand their operations in Bloomington by connecting them with IU-affiliated talent, expertise, funding avenues and other resources.

Working together, The Mill and IU have been a powerful force in building a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem in Bloomington.

East explains that The Mill has served as a model for other development in the area. Earlier this fall, the city announced that it had received a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to create a new Trades District Technology Center, which is expected to break ground in 2022. Additionally, the city is planning to redevelop the historic Showers Administration Building. The building will become the new home for the management company Fine Tune which was founded by a Kelley graduate.

For its part, IU Ventures has invested in numerous early-stage startups with strong connections to IU and that are part of the cohort of successful companies based at The Mill.

These startups include The Bee Corp, which was founded by Ellie Symes, a graduate of IU’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Wyatt Wells, an alumnus of the IU School of Public Health in Bloomington. The agtech startup develops solutions for growers and beekeepers who rely on commercial pollination.

Symes and Wells, who were recently named to Forbes’ prestigious 30 Under 30 list for 2022, launched their company after winning the IU Business Entrepreneurs in Software and Technology Competition in 2016. Since that time, the company has raised more than $3 million in funding, and its technology has been used to grade over 100,000 hives by beekeepers and crop growers in several U.S. states as well as Australia, New Zealand and Colombia. Last year, IU Ventures invested $250,000 in the company through the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund.

The IU Ventures portfolio also includes the rapidly emerging Civic Champs, Periodic and Ziptility. It also includes Blueprint Stats and Stagetime, which recently secured their second investments from the IU Angel Network that will help them advance their innovative products in the sports analytics and performing arts industries, respectively.

“IU Ventures recognizes the value of supporting not only our faculty and student entrepreneurs, but also the tremendous value supporting our alumni-led startups provides to the overall Bloomington community,” said IU Ventures President and CEO Tony Armstrong. “Our strong partnership with The Mill and other local support organizations allows us to connect campus resources to our emerging portfolio of investments.”

Both Thinnes and Bhatt applaud the “quality” of their engagement with IU, The Mill and the city of Bloomington, and the doors those institutions are opening up for them.

Both have expressed appreciation for the positive spirit that has greeted their arrival and that is giving them reason to feel extremely optimistic about the future of their businesses and the city they now call home.

“For us, we’re feeling like this is a fantastic place to be,” Bhatt says. “And it’s going to be a heck of a lot of fun to be in a place where so many of the resources we need to succeed are either right here or will be available very soon.

IU foreign language expertise playing key role in helping to resettle state’s Afghan refugees, integrate them into the Hoosier economy

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Earlier this month, Kirk White, Indiana University’s assistant vice president for strategic partnerships and vice provost for external relations at IU Bloomington, led a group of individuals from IU’s Hamilton Lugar School for Global and International Studies to Camp Atterbury, the military and civilian training post located in south-central Indiana, about 25 miles south of Indianapolis.

The group’s mission: to deliver 1,000 books containing key phrases in Dari and Pashto to U.S. military personnel supporting the Afghan refugees who have fled their home country after the Taliban takeover this past summer and are now temporarily housed at the army base. Dari and Pashto are the official and most widely spoken languages of the people of Afghanistan. More than two-fifths of the Afghan population speak Pashto, while about half speak some form of Dari, which is often referred to as the Afghan Persian.

Indiana University Assistant Vice President for Strategic Partnerships Kirk White, far left, led a university group that delivered 1,000 Afghan language phrasebooks to Indiana's Camp Atterbury. The books are being used by military personnel who are helping to resettle the Afghan refugees who are being temporarily housed at the army base.
Indiana University Assistant Vice President for Strategic Partnerships Kirk White, far left, led a university group that delivered 1,000 Afghan language phrasebooks to Indiana’s Camp Atterbury. The books are being used by military personnel who are helping to resettle the Afghan refugees who are being temporarily housed at the army base.

Since the early days of fall, students and staff across IU’s campuses have mobilized to help the more than 7,000 Afghan refugees who have been housed at Camp Atterbury, providing them with winter clothing, diapers, personal hygiene items and other essential supplies. Additionally, students and other members of the Hamilton Lugar School, which is named after the legendary Hoosier statesmen Lee Hamilton and (the late) Richard Lugar, have led a wide range of activities at the camp, including crafts, games and sports for children, and cultural orientation classes for adults.

Another big need at the camp has been for interpreters who speak the main Afghan languages. As Hamilton Lugar School Dean Lee Feinstein described last month in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, the Center for the Languages of the Central Asian Region, which is housed at the school, assembled a list of interpreters available to support the language-related efforts underway at Camp Atterbury. The center is one of 16 Title VI foreign language resource centers in the U.S. and the only one dedicated to the critical languages of Central Asia and surrounding countries. IU, which had a record number (11) of centers receive Title VI funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2018 and which teaches more languages (over 80) than any other U.S. university, is among the leading research universities receiving Title VI funding.

Members of the Hamilton Lugar School also helped deliver the Dari and Pashto phrasebooks to the camp. As Feinstein highlighted, these books have been customized to reflect the unique challenges that the resettlement has presented to the camp’s soldiers, many of whom have never interacted with foreign refugees.

“It’s great that IU’s language centers are assisting the Afghan refugees while they are welcomed at Camp Atterbury,” said White, who served as an officer in the Indiana National Guard and was deployed twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. “Many of these new residents are well educated, eager and can contribute to the employment base once settled across the state.”

Indeed, economic reports have offered evidence showing that an influx of foreign refugees — contrary to some economic worries — can have a positive effect on local labor markets. Not only do refugees contribute to the economy by entering the workforce of their adopted communities, many will eventually start their own businesses, thus creating new jobs for native workers.

Already, about half of the Afghan refugees have left the base for cities and towns across Indiana and elsewhere in the U.S., and Homeland Security officials hope to have all the refugees at Camp Atterbury resettled by the end of the year.

Translation: IU’s support, especially in the form of its celebrated foreign language expertise, will continue to play a major role in whether the state can achieve its resettlement goals and ensure that our Afghan friends contribute to a stronger, more vibrant and more innovative Indiana economy.

IU startup founders create buzz as Forbes’ newest “30 Under 30” honorees

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Six years ago, the news and communications team I led at the time was eager to show off its storytelling skills on behalf of Indiana University and, more importantly, to spotlight the work being done at IU to advance the top priority of the university’s newly adopted Bicentennial Strategic Plan: ensuring student success.

Our creative discussions led to what remains one of my all-time favorite IU Newsroom projects—an in-depth multimedia feature story on the efforts of IU students, faculty and staff to address devastating threats to the nation’s population of honey bees, which has been in decline for more than three decades in the U.S. Members of the sick species pollinate a third of the nation’s food supply, and they are responsible for adding more than $15 billion a year to the value of U.S. agricultural projects.

A large part of the story centered around an enterprising IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs grad student named Ellie Symes, who, along with several of her peers, had taken up the cause of the honey bee by forming a Beekeeping Club at IU Bloomington and engaging members of the campus community in addressing this important public health and food security challenge.

Here’s a video of Symes that was included in our feature story:

So you can imagine how excited, pleased and proud many of us involved in that story were to learn this week that Symes and fellow IU alumnus Wyatt Wells, a graduate of the IU School of Public Health and former Beekeeping Club member, were named to Forbes’ prestigious 30 Under 30 list for 2022.

Symes and Wells, who were honored by Forbes for their work in the field of enterprise technology, are founders of The Bee Corp, an Indianapolis-based agtech startup developing solutions for growers and beekeepers who rely on commercial pollination. They developed the company after winning the IU Business Entrepreneurs in Software and Technology Competition in 2016. Since that time, the company has raised more than $3 million in funding, and its technology has been used to grade over 100,000 hives by beekeepers and crop growers in several U.S. states as well as Australia, New Zealand and Colombia.

Notably, The Bee Corp is a “portfolio company” of IU Ventures, which leads IU’s investment in early-stage companies with strong university affiliations. Last year, IU Ventures invested $250,000 in the company through the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, which is used to support companies that are based on IU intellectual property.

My colleagues at IU Ventures are doubly excited today having learned that the founder of another of its portfolio companies, Luke Jacobs, of Indianapolis-based tech company Encamp, also made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. Jacobs, a graduate of IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences, co-founded Encamp, an environmental compliance software company, in 2017 with fellow College alum Daniel Smedema. IU Ventures was a founding investor in Encamp, which recently announced the completion of a $12 million Series B fundraising round, one of the biggest rounds raised in Indiana this year. As reported just yesterday on this blog, Encamp also is featured on a new list of “Top Indianapolis Startups to Watch in 2022.”

Indiana University alumni Daniel Smedema, left, and Luke Jacobs, co-founders of the Indianapolis-based tech company Encamp.
Indiana University alumni Daniel Smedema, left, and Luke Jacobs co-founded Indianapolis-based tech company Encamp in 2017. One of IU Ventures’ portfolio companies, Encamp was recently named as one of the “Top Indianapolis Startups to Watch in 2022.” Photo from IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

This fall, Jacobs and Smedema are also being featured on the College of Arts and Sciences’ fourth-annual “20 Under 40” list of accomplished young alumni. Read their story in the most recent issue of The College magazine.

Personally speaking, I keep thinking back to the IU feature story on Symes and her mission to bring greater awareness to pressing threats facing the honey bee. Back then, our team was captivated by her passion and determination to make a major difference in attacking such an important national issue. More broadly, her tale reflected the work so many entrepreneurial IU students are engaged in across our campuses on trying to solve real-world problems affecting our nation’s health and economy.

As it turns out, her story was just getting started. I can’t wait for what comes next and who will follow in her footsteps.

Helping to steer the growth of Indy’s fast-growing startup community

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Earlier this week, Detroit-based Purpose Jobs, which bills itself as the Midwest’s largest startup community, unveiled its list of Top Indianapolis Startups to Watch in 2022. The 17 Circle City companies that made the list were selected based on a number of factors, including their success in attracting investment, increasing their workforce and launching innovative products.

Scanning the list, it’s clear that Indiana University and its startup investment arm, IU Ventures, are making major contributions to the success of what Purpose Jobs describes as “one of the fastest growing startup communities in the Midwest and beyond.”

Indiana University alumni Daniel Smedema, left, and Luke Jacobs, co-founders of the Indianapolis-based tech company Encamp.
Indiana University alumni Daniel Smedema, left, and Luke Jacobs co-founded Indianapolis-based tech company Encamp in 2017. One of IU Ventures’ portfolio companies, Encamp was recently named as one of the “Top Indianapolis Startups to Watch in 2022.” Photo from IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

Case in point: IU alumni have founded or co-founded 11 of the 17 companies on the list, and two of the recognized startups are “portfolio companies” of IU Ventures, which leads IU’s investment in and support of early-stage startup companies with strong ties to the university.

The IU Ventures portfolio companies on the list are:

  • Encamp, an environmental compliance software company co-founded in 2017 by IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences alumni Luke Jacobs, the company’s CEO, and Daniel Smedema, Encamp’s senior software engineer. IU Ventures was a founding investor in Encamp, which recently announced the completion of a $12 million Series B fundraising round, one of the biggest rounds raised in Indiana this year.
  • Sharpen, a developer of cloud-based customer service software co-founded in 2011 by Cameron Weeks and IUPUI alumnus Bracken Fields, who developed the real-time communications technology that serves as the foundation of Sharpen’s platform. Since 2019, the company has raised a remarkable $41 million in growth capital over three fundraising rounds from a collection of local sources, including the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, which is managed by IU Ventures and supports companies based on IU intellectual property. Sharpen has also been named to Inc. 5000’s annual list of America’s fastest-growing private companies in 2020 and 2021.

Additionally, the founders of two other companies on the Purpose Jobs list—Zylo and Near the Box—are members of the IU Angel Network, a resource community within IU Ventures that facilitates connections between startup companies and prospective investors from IU’s global community of alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends.

Zylo, a leading SaaS optimization platform, was co-founded by company CEO Eric Christopher, a 2001 graduate of the IU Kelley School of Business. (Read a 2018 post by Christopher.) Adi Gandra, who earned a degree in computer science and economics from IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2011, is the co-founder and CEO of Near the Box, which provides digitally engineered solutions to challenges facing businesses of all sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 firms.

The Top Indianapolis Startups to Watch in 2022 are listed below. Those with IU alumni founders are in CAPS.

  1. GREENLIGHT GURU
  2. Bloomerang
  3. PAXAFE
  4. ENCAMP
  5. CASTED
  6. LESSONLY
  7. SHARPEN
  8. MANDOLIN
  9. ZYLO
  10. BOARDABLE
  11. METACX
  12. Filo.co
  13. DemandJump
  14. Springbuk
  15. ClusterTruck
  16. Realync
  17. NEAR THE BOX

Giving thanks for a collective innovation culture

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Heading into Thanksgiving week, Indiana University is seeing a cornucopia of major developments on the innovation front.

Here’s a sampling of several recent advancements, which reflect how IU and its partners are furthering a collective innovation culture across Indiana.

Furthering the IU-Crane connection. Earlier this week, at a signing event that included IU President Pamela Whitten, IU renewed its commitment to a longstanding educational partnership with Naval Support Activity Crane, a naval facility located in southwestern Indiana, approximately 25 miles southwest of the IU Bloomington campus. As President Whitten noted in her weekly newsletter, the partnership between Indiana’s flagship public research university and the state’s largest military installation has provided opportunities for IU STEM students to gain unique, hands-on experience. It has also resulted in several research projects that are helping communities across the state address issues concerning economic development, education, energy management, environmental science, land conservation, public health and sustainability.

IU President Pamela Whitten, right, and NSA Crane Commanding Officer Cmdr. James L. Smith renew their institutions' partnership during Whitten's inaugural visit to Naval Support Activity Crane. Photo courtesy of NSA Crane.
IU President Pamela Whitten, right, and NSA Crane Commanding Officer Cmdr. James L. Smith renew their institutions’ partnership during Whitten’s inaugural visit to Naval Support Activity Crane. Photo courtesy of NSA Crane.

IU also continues to engage in significant research activity with Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, which is located at NSA Crane. These include projects related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, programmable circuit boards and quantum information processing in service of national defense.

Growing the next generation of innovators: IU is celebrating the fifth year of the Shoemaker Scholars program, which began with a simple question: “Who better to share information with students than the students themselves?” Led by Travis J. Brown, senior executive assistant dean of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, the program is composed of a select group of 10 students from schools and majors across the IU Bloomington campus whose mission is to provide their peers with knowledge and experiences that can help them grow as entrepreneurs and innovators. It also includes $3,000 a year in tuition assistance.

IU startups are seizing the spotlight: Hunter Hawley is an alumnus of the Shoemaker Scholars program and a recent graduate of the IU Kelley School of Business. He’s also the founder and CEO of Blueprint Stats, a video analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to help athletes, coaches and teams improve their performance. Earlier this week, IU Ventures, which facilitates connections between startup companies and prospective funding sources from IU’s global community of alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends, announced it has made follow-on investments through the IU Angel Network in Blueprint as well as Stagetime, a performing arts startup founded by IU Jacobs School of Music alumnus Jennie Moser. Stagetime and Blueprint Stats received their first IU Angel Network investments in July and December 2020, respectively. On Tuesday, Nov. 16, Stagetime, which now boasts more than 1,600 users, announced it had raised $1.5 million in a new fundraising round led by Hyde Park Angles, which included the follow-on investment from the IU Angel Network.

Building a better environmental compliance solution: Another IU-affiliated tech company, Indianapolis-based Encamp, was in the news this week for recently completing its own major fundraising round. Encamp, which offers a cloud-based software product that helps businesses manage their environmental, health and safety compliance records, raised $12 million in a Series B round, marking one of the biggest rounds raised in Indiana this year.

IU Ventures was a founding investor in Encamp, which was co-founded in 2017 by IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences alumni Luke Jacobs, the company’s CEO, and Daniel Smedema, Encamp’s senior software engineer. Last Year, IU Ventures made a second investment in Encamp through the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund. The $151,000 investment contributed to the company’s $3.1 million Series A funding round.

This fall, Jacobs and Smedema are also being featured on the College of Arts and Sciences’ fourth-annual “20 Under 40” list of accomplished young alumni. Read their story in the most recent issue of The College magazine.

Dreaming of being an investment shark? Then you better figure out if you’re a night owl or a morning person, according to a new study by researchers at IU’s Kelley School and the University of Central Florida. The study shows that time-based factors—like time of day and whether you’re a morning or evening person—can influence your early-stage investment decisions and ability to evaluate whether a startup will be successful.

Signaling new innovation in the arts. Finally, the Jacobs School of Music recently welcomed members of New Morse Code as its “entrepreneurs of the month.” The nationally recognized cello-percussion duo spent a two-week residency at the world-renowned school, during which they showcased and discussed their artistic vision and instrumental compositions addressing issues of resilience, sustainability and innovation. As part of their residency, the ensemble also participated in an innovation roundtable, an introduction to music entrepreneurship class, a conversation with IU climate scientists and artists at IU Bloomington’s Cook Center for Public Arts and Humanities, and a public workshop and public performance in Salem, Ind.

New Morse Code’s visit was hosted by the Jacobs School’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development, which supports Jacobs students as they prepare for innovative, creative and successful lives in the performing arts. The office includes as one of its resources Project Jumpstart, a student-led initiative that serves as a catalyst for entrepreneurial thought and action among students by offering career development and entrepreneurship workshops, networking events, peer support for projects, mini-conferences and coordination of an annual Innovation Competition.

Enjoy a video featuring interviews and performances by New Morse Code.

IU students dominate recent 5G ‘hackathon’ competition

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

Talk about being “dialed in.”

Students from Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI swept up several of the biggest prizes at the recently held AT&T 5G Sports Hackathon, the fifth tech competition that AT&T has hosted in central Indiana in the last six years. This year’s event, which was held at Butler University’s Health and Recreation Complex, focused on the potentially game-changing effect that fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology can have on the sports industry that continues to be such an important catalyst of the Hoosier economy.

Photo of Indiana University students who participated in the AT&T 5G Sports Hackathon, Oct. 22-24, 2021.
Students from the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI spent an entire weekend competing for — and winning — top prizes at the AT&T 5G Sports Hackathon, which was held in Indianapolis from Oct. 22-24.

The hackathon, which took place from Oct. 22-24, challenged teams of student developers, designers and other creatives to develop cutting-edge mobile technologies that enhance the fan experience and spotlight the benefits of a 5G network. Around 300 students participated in the roughly 48-hour event, during which they also interacted with various 5G and edge computing experts, as well as leaders from local sports teams, top entertainment venues and public safety organizations. IU Ventures, which assists IU students, faculty, staff and alumni in work that advances high-potential new venture opportunities, was one of the sponsors of the event.

More than $100,000 in prizes were up for grabs during the competition, over which IU’s student participants reigned supreme.

In doing so, they showcased the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired during their time at IU – including design thinking, user experience and industry research, data management, coding, communication and presentation – as they competed in a high-intensity, fast-paced environment. Faced with several key challenges that will impact the future of Indiana’s dynamic sports economy, they delivered the kinds of innovative solutions that the state is hoping will translate into saleable products and services, new business ventures and new jobs for Hoosiers.

A team led by Priyanjali Mittal, a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction program at the School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI, took home the grand prize for “best overall application,” for which it received a $25,000 prize and 1-year memberships to several of the state’s premier spaces and initiatives for entrepreneurs and startups, including the Indiana 5G Zone, Indiana IoT Lab and Launch Fishers. The team also won top prizes for the “best use of 5G” and “best accessibility solution.”

Students from the school also captured first and second place prizes in the “fan engagement” category, totaling $15,000, as well as second and third place prizes for “venue public safety,” and a top prize for the “best use of FirstNet technology.”

The 5G mobile standard, which cellular phone companies began deploying worldwide in 2019, is the planned successor to 4G networks, which provide connectivity to most current cell phones. The new networks deliver greater bandwidth, giving markedly faster download speeds than 4G. As such, it is expected they will increasingly be used as internet service providers for most desktop and laptop computers, competing with existing ISPs such as cable internet. They are also expected to have a dramatic impact on the development and application of the internet-of-things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

In Indianapolis, investment in 5G connectivity is seen as a major development in the city continuing to be a mecca for world-class sporting events, such as the Indianapolis 500, the Super Bowl and NCAA March Madness. According to the Indiana Sports Corp, which partnered in the hackathon, Indianapolis has hosted more than 500 national and international sports events since 1979; these events have led to over $4 billion in direct spending in the community over that time.

Below is a complete list of the winning teams from the School of Informatics and Computing, including their prize money earned. 

  • Best Overall Winner ($25,000), Best Use of 5G ($2,000) and Best Accessibility ($2,000)
    • Winning team: Funyans
  • 1st Place Fan Engagement ($10,000)
    • Winning team: Game Mate
  • 2nd Place Fan Engagement ($5,000)
    • Winning team: SOIC Jags
  • 2nd Place Venue Public Safety ($5,000)
    • Winning team: 3 Amigos
  • 3rd Place Venue Public Safety ($2,000)
    • Winning team: Brute Force
  • Best Use of FirstNet API ($2,000)
    • Winning team: Journey

Check out the opening program from this year’s Hackathon.

Accelerating Indiana’s growth in AI, automation and STEM

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

If Indiana is like an IndyCar — racing against other states to transform big ideas into thriving businesses, attract new investment and accelerate growth in transformational industries such as artificial intelligence and automation — its flagship public university might be seen as a highly trained pit crew, engaging its vast educational resources and experience to put the Hoosier state in the leader’s circle.

Late last month, Indiana University helped fuel the success of the Indy Autonomous Challenge, the world’s first autonomous race car competition, held at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. IU was among the sponsors of the inaugural event, which featured teams made up of students from 21 universities and from nine different countries competing to win a $1 million grand prize.

Numerous prominent Hoosier government and business officials were on hand for the IAC, including Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, U.S. Sen. Todd Young and Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett. They were joined by more than 400 high school students from across the state, who heard Holcomb officially kick off the competition with the call ‘Ladies and gentlemen … start your software and crank your engines!”

The event brought together global thought leaders and experts from business, education and government to discuss new technologies designed to advance the commercialization of fully autonomous vehicles and deployment of advanced driver-assistance systems. These enhancements are expected to lead to increased safety and performance in motorsports as well as all modes of commercial transportation. The event also underscored the importance of enhancing education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math as central to Indiana’s strategy to build the next generation of innovators and technologists.

IU was the main sponsor of a pre-race meeting of 45 STEM instructors from across Indiana brought together by Innovate WithIN. A program developed by the STARTedUP Foundation, Innovate WithIN is the most elite high school pitch competition in the country, giving high schoolers from every region of the Hoosier state a chance to pitch their entrepreneurial idea for a chance at $25,000 and the opportunity to collaborate with world-class innovators. At the meeting, Natalie Edwards, director of undergraduate recruitment at IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, addressed the teachers, sharing with them learning opportunities from IU that the instructors could take back to their respective classrooms.

The scene of self-driving cars cruising around the Speedway brought to mind the world-class research that is coming out of the Transportation and Autonomous Systems Institute at IUPUI, which is also the only college campus to offer a bachelor’s degree in motorsports engineering.

Founded in 2006, at a time when many people still viewed driverless cars as an idea out of a sci-fi movie, TASI continues to provide valuable insights into the development, performance, regulation, safety and societal impacts of autonomous vehicles and intelligent transportation systems through its partnerships and collaborations with universities, businesses, government agencies and other organizations. Just last year, Toyota and IUPUI issued the first license to commercialize standardized safety testing systems for the development and validation of automotive automatic emergency braking systems. The testing technology was developed and patented through a partnership between TASI and the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center.

The event was also held just a few months after the celebrated launch of a free autonomous shuttle service that is serving the IUPUI and downtown Indianapolis communities in a pilot phase through Nov. 19.

Finally, the event underscored how much IU has been revving up its educational programming and engagement efforts in the areas of AI and machine learning.

In June, IU dedicated the $35 million Luddy Center for Artificial Intelligence, a 58,000-square-foot facility that will serve as the hub for multidisciplinary research at the university in advanced AI and machine-learning applications. The center, which has begun welcoming IU faculty and staff this fall, will house programs in, among other areas, robotics, complex networks, health and social media. It will draw upon the strength of researchers at the Luddy School, as well as collaborators from IU’s extensive range of health and life science schools, departments and programs.

Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering
IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering is home to the university’s extensive strengths in AI and automation research.

The Vehicle Autonomy and Intelligence Lab, established in 2018, is affiliated with the Luddy School’s recently launched Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering. VAIL focuses on developing methodologies that enhance the autonomy and intelligence of robotic systems such as unmanned ground, aerial and aquatic vehicles.

This past spring, IU and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, were awarded $1.7 million to collaborate on artificial intelligence programming for rural middle school students. NSWC Crane is teaming up with the Luddy School and the School of Education at IU Bloomington to pilot the program, titled AI Goes Rural: Middle School Artificial Intelligence Education. The program, which will focus on how AI is involved in students’ lives and the ethics surrounding AI. As such, it reflects the mission of the Department of Defense’s STEM Strategic Plan, which calls for increasing participation of underserved groups in STEM activities and education programs.

In July, IU announced that the same two schools were joining two new AI research institutes that are funded with $40 million in National Science Foundation grants and are working on AI-based technologies that are helping to improve people’s lives.

In August, the NSF awarded IU a new grant to help the university train the next generation of AI and cybersecurity professionals. The award supplements a previous $2.25 million NSF grant last year that established IU as a participating institution in CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service. The national program trains information technology professionals and security managers to meet rapidly growing cybersecurity needs of federal, state, local and tribal governments. The first group of IU’s Scholarship for Service scholars began their studies at the Luddy School this fall.

And AI research at IU was prominently featured during the recently held Indiana AI Week. The event brought together researchers from IU and other higher education institutions, government agencies and industry to share ideas and discoveries around such issues as workforce development, national AI priorities, ethics, machine learning, implementation strategies and monitoring AI algorithms in healthcare.

Of course, far too much is happening — and happening rapidly — in the the world of AI and automation for IU to take a victory lap. But it’s fair to say the university is on the right track in helping the Hoosier state navigate and seize future economic opportunities in these two dynamic areas.

Connecting capital to ideas and collaborating to ignite Indiana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

For nearly two decades, Biocrossroads has established itself as a leader in helping to build Indiana’s life sciences sector and a major source of venture capital for Indiana-based life sciences startups. Biocrossroads has also been one of Indiana University’s most effective partners in helping to move laboratory discoveries into the marketplace and catalyzing a robust culture of entrepreneurship and innovation across the Hoosier state.

A new report from Biocrossroads reflects the enormous impact that continued capital investments from our state, its leading public research universities and groups like Biocrossroads are having on fueling the expansion of Indiana’s early-stage companies.

“Supporting Life Sciences: A Look Back at Biocrossroads’ Capital Strategy” details the results of major investment funds that have provided important capital to Indiana’s life sciences startups over the past 15 years. The report includes examples of startup companies that have received seed-stage and venture capital funds from Biocrossroads and have gone on to receive significant follow-on investments. Biocrossroads’ three Indiana Seed Funds, totaling more than $24 million, have invested in 32 life sciences startups since 2006; remarkably, those companies have gone on to raise an additional $796 million — or more than 33 times Biocrossroads’ initial investment.

IU Ventures logo
IU Ventures assists Indiana University students, faculty, staff and alumni in work that advances high-potential new venture opportunities. Along with groups like Biocrossroads, it is making major investments to help move laboratory discoveries, including those with roots at IU, into the marketplace and catalyzing a robust culture of entrepreneurship and innovation across the Hoosier state.

Many of these companies have their roots in IU scientific and technological research and are growing as part of the ever-expanding portfolio supported by IU Ventures, which assists IU students, faculty, staff and alumni in work that advances high-potential new venture opportunities. IU Ventures is also a limited partner in two of Biocrossroads’ three early-stage capital funds, which have helped advance the development of companies that feature promising biological or technical innovations, are results-driven and are led by highly competent management teams.

For example, both Biocrossroads and IU Ventures include in their portfolios Kovina Therapeutics, a preclinical biotechnology startup seeking to develop new treatments for Human Papillomavirus related infections and cancers. Kovina was founded in 2020 by Dr. Elliot Androphy, professor and chair of the department of dermatology at the IU School of Medicine; Dr. Samy Meroueh, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the School of Medicine, and pharmaceutical professional Dr. Zhijian Lu.

Both groups are also heavily invested in the continued growth of Carmel-based MBX Biosciences, which was founded by Richard DiMarchi, a distinguished professor of chemistry and Gill Chair in biomolecular sciences at IU, along with IUPUI alumnus Kent Hawryluk and Tim Knickerbocker. MBX is a preclinical-stage biotech company committed to creating therapies to treat rare endocrine diseases where there is inadequate treatment available. A founding investor in MBX, IU Ventures has provided a total of $1 million in support to the company through the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, one of the three investment programs it manages. This included an initial $500,000 investment in the company in 2019. MBX also has several ties with IU, including an agreement for the company to support research at the DiMarchi Laboratory in Bloomington.

The Indianapolis-based clinical stage biotechnology company Apexian Pharmaceuticals is led by Mark R. Kelley, the Betty and Earl Herr Professor of Pediatric Oncology Research at the IU School of Medicine. The company is focused on developing first-in-class therapeutic agents to treat a number of pediatric and adult cancers as well as several other life-threatening diseases.

Apexian received venture funding under Biocrossroads’ Indiana Future Fund, established in 2003 to promote the creation of Indiana-based businesses on the cutting edge of biotechnology. Recently, IU Ventures announced a $100,000 follow-on investment in Apexian through its own Innovate Indiana Fund, which had previously supported a $300,000 investment in the company. The collective funding that the company has received has helped it mature from having one compound in clinical trials to possessing a broader pipeline of new agents and conducting emerging research that has signaled promise in treatments for cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.

In citing the successes of all of these companies, the Biocrossroads report serves to underscore the fundamental importance of critical early-stage investment to the state’s innovation strategy. It also suggests that groups like Biocrossroads and IU Ventures will have an even greater impact in the future on igniting Indiana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Watch an IU Ventures video about the mission, success and growth of MBX Biosciences.

IU Ventures’ investment helps fuel continued growth of Indiana-based life sciences startup and newly named ‘Most Fundable’ company

Posted on by Ryan Piurek

The first-ever company to receive a double investment through IU Ventures’ startup support ecosystem, diagnostic cancer testing startup Amplified Sciences, just received some resounding support by way of one of the nation’s most rigorous startup competitions.

Amplifed Sciences has landed on Pepperdine Graziadio Business School’s fourth-annual Most Fundable Companies List, which was announced during a recent virtual event. It was named as one of the top 16 “Most Fundable Companies,” and was chosen for the honor based on several company variables, including financial projections, market opportunity, intellectual property, competitive advantage and management-team expertise.

Amplified Sciences commercializes the innovation of IU School of Medicine biochemistry graduate Vincent Jo Davisson, a longtime biochemist at Purdue University, where he invented the technology that Amplified Sciences is developing. Davisson is now the company’s co-founder and chief scientific officer. The company’s co-founder and CEO is Diana Caldwell, an IU Kelley School of Business alumna, who was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Purdue Foundry when she and Davisson met. Caldwell is also a member of the industry advisory board of the Kelley School’s Center for the Business of Life Sciences.

With operations in the Purdue Research Park and key alliances on both U.S. coasts, Amplified Sciences is focused on accurately detecting and pre-empting the risks of debilitating diseases. The company’s lead assay helps clinicians test for pancreatic cancer and better treat patients with pancreatic cysts.

Amplified Sciences received an initial $125,000 investment from the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund in April 2020. Later that spring, it received a $25,000 investment through the IU Angel Network.

Upon receiving the dual investment, Caldwell praised IU Ventures for the work it continues to do to support entrepreneurship and accelerate promising startups.

“The IU Angel Network has recruited an impressive group of alumni who are interested in supporting the IU-connected entrepreneurship community, not only through investment dollars but also through their expertise and networks. We are thrilled to have them on board,” she said. “This second investment by IU Angels is a testament to the power of collaboration across the IU network and demonstrates the great work IU Ventures is doing to develop a strong startup ecosystem.”

Caldwell also expressed her appreciation for the support and expertise of IU-affiliated researchers who have helped build the company’s platform, including Dr. Mohammad Al-Haddad, a gastroenterologist at the IU School of Medicine, who has researched and published on the pancreas for years, as well as experts at the IU Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center.

A complete list of the “Most Fundable Companies” is available online, where visitors can vote for up to three of their favorite companies now through Nov. 1.