The Cornfield Capitalists: Recent Episodes
Kentucky Inno
The Cornfield Capitalists is a new podcast from Kentucky Inno and Louisville Business First. It's focused on highlighting venture capitalists and investors that are putting money into companies in Middle America.
Kelli Jones noticed a gap in the Indianapolis tech ecosystem: It didn't allow for consumer investment.
In the Circle City, business-to-business, software-as-a-service companies were the only ones getting funded. And as Jones noticed more and more consumer apps and direct-to-consumer business come through her programs, she saw an opportunity.
Jones began raising a fund in 2019, while running The Heritage Group Accelerator for Techstars. The pandemic only accelerated that effort, which would ultimately become Sixty8 Capital.
Jones, managing partner of Sixty8 Capital, joins us on The Cornfield Capitalists podcast this week.
The podcast highlights venture capitalists that are investing in business in Middle America.
Last May, Sixty8 Capital announced the first close of its $20 million fund that's investing in seed-stage startups led by historically undercapitalized Black, Latinx, women and LGBTQ+ founders.
"When we did the first close, the strategy really was to start investing immediately so that we could show what kind of deals we can get access to, so that we could show the kinds of companies that we're looking for, so we can show that pipeline is not an issue [and] deal flow is not an issue when it comes to diverse companies," Jones said. "As you circle back with people that may have said no before, or maybe took more time, we were able to actually just show how companies we've been investing in in May were already seeing markups in October."
Molly Bonakdapour really wanted to work at a startup.
She was an equity research analyst at JP Morgan in New York City, but in her effort to find a small company with big ambitions, she landed a role as a senior analyst at 7Wire Ventures. That position is what led her to Livongo Health in 2014.
"I joined Livongo when I was 24 years old, when I had no sense of what a startup was or what venture capital really was," she shared in the latest episode of "The Cornfield Capitalist" podcast.
Today she's a partner at Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital. On the podcast she tells us how her experience there shaped her decision making today.
The Cornfield Capitalists is a podcast from Kentucky Inno. Follow us on popular podcast services to never miss an episode.
In graduate school, Allison Weil Lechnir co-founded Flag Analytics, a predictive analytics startup focused on public safety.
She ended up shutting the company down shortly after participating in an accelerator program, recognizing it lacked good product market and team fit.
Lechnir now uses that founding experience, coupled with her experience running business operations at a Series A-stage company, when evaluating startups as a partner at Chicago-based Hyde Park Venture Partners.
"It gives me a lot of empathy for [founders]. Founding a company is really, really, really hard," Lechnir shared on The Cornfield Capitalists Podcast. "Pitching to VCs is really, really, really hard and emotionally draining.
"I try to remember for all of my meetings with founders that while for me, many times, this is sort of just another pitch meeting. For them, it's the most important meeting of their week. And so you have to have a lot of empathy for that."
The Cornfield Capitalists is a weekly podcast from KentuckyInno.com and Louisville Business First. You can find it on popular podcast services.
John Willmoth doesn't believe Kentucky can be Silicon Valley. But that doesn't mean there isn't opportunity to be found in the Bluegrass State.
In fact, the founder and managing partner of Poplar Ventures has made several investments in early-stage companies scaling from Middle America, such as Louisville-based SkuVault and Switcher Studios, and PERQ out of Indianapolis.
However in order to continue to grow the tech economy in the Midwest, Willmoth told us on the most recent episode of The Cornfield Capitalists podcast there are two things the region is missing.
"If you asked me what's the big difference between the two purely from a venture capital perspective, there's more capital [in Silicon Valley] and they have a deeper bench in terms of operational talent," he said. "To me, that's what we have to do. I mean, I don't know any way to solve this other than to get more talent here. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation."
On the latest episode of The Cornfield Capitalists, Willmoth referenced the success of one of his largest investments ZirMed, which merged with Navicure to form Waystar in 2017. It now employs more than 1,000 people between its offices in Louisville, Atlanta and Salt Lake City.
"Instead of one [ZirMed], we need 20 of those," he continued. "By definition it will create more talent and that talent is going to look around and say, 'Hey, I can go do this, or I can go do that.' And I think at the end of the day, that's the beauty of Silicon Valley is that they have that depth."
Paul Ford was born and raised in the San Fransisco Bay Area. But he never felt it was quite his speed.
The third-generation Californian spent some time in the Pacific Northwest and Tennessee before landing in Louisville, Kentucky, where he found the type environment he was looking for — a place where he could quietly scale his insurtech startup, Traffk, outside the dog-eat-dog world of Silicon Valley.
Now, as founder and managing partner of DS9 Capital, Ford is looking to invest in other startups outside of the coasts. The portfolio management holding company is focused on building enduring and stable cash-flowing businesses in the insurance and healthcare technology space.
It's not necessarily just chasing unicorns as so many investors tend to be in this business.
In fact, Ford takes issue with those kind of investors.
"If you don't mention the 'B' word to private equity and investors, they don't want to talk to you any further. And that 'B' word is 'billions,'" he tell us. "I personally focus on building a business and taking it from $0 to about $150-$300 million in enterprise value. I think anyone in their right mind would say: That's amazing Paul, how many times do you think you can do that in your lifetime."
Ford joins us for the very first episode of The Cornfield Capitalists, a new podcast focused on the firms that are investing in companies in Middle America.
The Cornfield Capitalists is produced by KY Inno. Follow us on popular podcast services to never miss an episode.