Big Exits, Affordability, and Tech Transplants: Why Indianapolis Is the Next Big Startup City
Fabio Consoli
By Kate Rockwood, Contributing Editor, INC.
Affordability, a new rapid transit line, and a business-friendly government are helping Indianapolis become a hotbed for B2B startups. Here's what to know.
Startup Neighborhoods
Salesforce, Angie's List, and email-marketing software giant ExactTarget are all within blocks of one another in downtown's Monument Circle, a neighborhood packed with tech startups. There's no significant cost premium to locating in the heart of the city, which allows many companies to be close to the action.
Indy's $96 million, IndyGo Red Line is a bus rapid-transit route that connects downtown to trendy Fountain Square. The HGTV-featured neighborhood has become a haven for creative startups that want to bypass the parking shortage downtown.
Just northeast of Indianapolis is Fishers, a suburb that has spent the past five years wooing tech companies by lowering taxes and raising new office buildings. Nearly 600 members have joined the new 52,000-square-foot co-working space Launch Fishers, while the Indiana IoT Lab attracted 3,000 visitors and 15 internet-of-things-focused companies in its first year.
$14.8 million: Indy's seed capital in 2019, up from $1 million in 2013Source: PwC's MoneyTree tool
Talent Pipeline
To fight brain drain, the Orr Fellowship annually places 60 college grads at startups such as talent-management platform Torchlite and training software company Lessonly.
Business owners recommend TechPoint for finding both entry-level and senior-level hires. For tech talent, Kristen Cooper, founder of Startup Ladies, endorses Indy's nonprofit coding academy Eleven Fifty and networking events at Women & Hi Tech.
Companies to Watch
Emplify made apps for churches until it pivoted in 2016 to become an employee-engagement platform. Since then, the company has seen annual growth north of 250 percent.
Big businesses turn to 250ok to crack their customers' inboxes. The eight-year-old email-marketing startup counts Adobe, Salesforce, and Pinterest among its customers.
Recovery Force, a favorite of athletes and medical professionals, incorporates tiny titanium batteries and memory fibers in its compression clothing to make the fabric expand and contract, which improves circulation. A $10 million Series A funding round brought the company's products to market. The National Institutes of Health kicked in another $1.8 million.
