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Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd,
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brought to you by Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
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entrepreneur who's built and sold twelve businesses, a recipient of
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four private equity awards, featured ted X speaker and Ben
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Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author. Peer's Gregory Sheppard.
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I'm back with Tof Day, the CEO of the Elevated Ventures.
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We've been talking about his incredible journey from growing up
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in a strict household on a small farm to becoming
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a powerhouse in the venture capital world. So TOF you're
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hyper focused on building a statewide ecosystem in Indiana. Some
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people listening might wonder, you have to be in Indiana
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to get funded? Can I be in another state? How
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does Elevate Ventures work with regards to your hyper focus
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on Indiana?
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So Elevi Venture's mothership so preseed Seed Series, a innovation
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driven companies have to either be headquartered or have a
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significant presence in Indiana. So you could the CEO could
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be in Boston. Then we have companies like this today.
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The CEO could be in Boston, but it makes sense
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for all of their buildout or expansion or operations to
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be in Indiana because of their customer base for example,
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or access to researchers, or access to talent or whatever
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it might be, access to distribution. So many different reasons
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that would come like so rally, for example, we run
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one of the world's largest pitch competitions, right a five
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million dollar pitch competition, and so four of the five
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winners in year one have all set up shop, either
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moved or set up all their expansion in Indiana because
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it's much more cost efficient for them to do so,
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whether it's cost of operations is much more efficient, access
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to talent, partners, distribution, customers. They were shocked when they
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came here and saw how easy it was to navigate
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the ecosystem. And then this year, this past year of RALLY,
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all five or are two of them were winners of
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two of the winners were from Indiana. The other three
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are moving here setting up manufacturing. In one case, for example,
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what people don't realize about Indiana is it's actually the
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innovation capital of the world. So if you're listening to this,
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go google Innovation Capital the World or where is the
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Innovation capital the world, and you will see Indiana on
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the first page mentioned with other folks like you know,
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Switzerland that comes up as the most innovative country, and
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of course you have San Francisco pops up in other markets.
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And I'm curious, actually, if you're on your computer right now,
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real time to see if it comes up, Greg, I
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hope you.
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Did it came up?
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It did?
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It came up, and it shows that it's trademarked.
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There you go. So it must be true if it's
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on the first page of Google, that they were in
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the basic cap of the world. But then people say, well,
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how could you say that. Well, global economists talk about
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a concept called the productivity boom, and the productivity boom
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is basically all about the disruption of data technology faster
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than ever with all sectors. They believe that a center
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of this global phenomenon is going to occur in the
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middle core of the United States, mainly because of the
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proximity of industries with one another in cost structure. So
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if that's true, that I would submit that actually Indiana
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is at epicenter. And why so there are seven ingredients
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why infrastructure, talent, mission, critical industry, technology, lifestyle, cost of living,
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regulatory environment. Now I'll just rattle off a few. In infrastructure,
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we have the number one ranked infrastructure in the United States.
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We have the number one ranked airport in North America
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like twelve thirteen years running. We have the only premier
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inland port system. We move, make and manage things better
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than anybody else. Talent. We have the number one undergraduate
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engineering college in the country twenty seven years running per
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US News and World Report. That's Rose Hollmond Purdue as
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number one ranked online engineering multiple number one online engineering degrees.
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I use the largest medical school, Notre Dame's largest Catholic university.
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The list goes on. With talent. We produced the world's
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greatest talent. We produced the first man on the moon.
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We had the number one highest valued pharma company in
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the world, the number one pure play ad company, the
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number two animal health company, the number two healthcare system.
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Where the orthipedes capital the world, were the RV capital
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the world, or the advanced manufacturing capital the world, or
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the wood capital the world. Where the amateur sports capital
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the world, or the racing capital the world. These are
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all real stats. We go into technology. Over one hundred
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and twenty six billion in capitol announcements. It just the
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last eight years, three federal Tech Hub designations, we had
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eight Fortune five hundred companies, multiple billion dollar plus companies.
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We get in a lifestyle and cost of living. We
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have the most affordable place to live, the best place
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for college grads, number one, best place to start a
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company two years ago, number two last year, Safest place
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to live, best place to raise a family. The list
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goes on, the number one children's museum in the world,
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and then a few years ago ranked number one for
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regiatory environment. Ninety four percent of the legislation that we
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pass is passing them by Parson fashion. And that's just
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a tip of the iceberg. I could go on for
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another thirty minutes about number one top five rankings, but
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the world just doesn't know it because we don't talk
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about it. So that's why we're so excited to welcome
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the world to our home. And we love doing business
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with people, you know, outside of the state as well
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and across the nation, indeed across the globe. But I
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think the future is it's really hard. You think about
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access and opportunity and you go to markets like San Francisco, Boston,
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New York, Austin. I love all these markets. These are
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all wonderful markets, right, And I've I've spent time in
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all those markets. I've had offices in some of them.
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They're all wonderful, But most of them you either get
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access or you get opportunity. You don't get both. In
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in Indiana you can get both access and opportunity much
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more efficiently. And you want to go to the big city,
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you want to go to the mountains, you want to
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go to the ocean, You pop on a plane. You're
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there in four hours.
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Hmm. And it's center right, So it's located so it's
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easy to get around.
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I can get to New York to Boston easy. I
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can get to San Francisco easy. I get to Austin easy,
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Salt Lake City, Seattle, right. We get to eat those
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places on drug.
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Flight, all the meccas. I wanted. I want to shift
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ears again because I'm really excited about talking about Rally. Yes,
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I had the opportunity to go speak at Rally. I
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had never heard of the show before, and I got
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a contest.
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By the way, your session was awesome. People were talking
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about that for weeks afterwards.
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Oh, thank you so much. I really really appreciate it.
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Break Yeah, but thank you, Thank you. I really appreciate that.
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I mean I went there and I was like, I
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was like, okay, I'm going to Indiana. I have to
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admit I'd never been to Indianapolis before, so I was
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like pretty excited, you know, because of the speedway and everything.
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I was like, this is this is so cool? And
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I went there and I could not believe the conference.
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I was like, this is like a legit San Francisco
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Silicon Valley conference YEP in Indianapolis, and like you said,
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it's a it's a it's a secret.
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Right.
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I went there and I was just blown away. And
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so I mean, you're the guy that started this whole thing, right,
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and it's one of the best conferences I've ever been to.
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What made you come up with this idea? How did
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you turn it into this amazing conference? I mean, what's
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behind this whole thing? Because I was like floored. I
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had no I did not expect that. It was just
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absolutely amazing.
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So well, thank you so much for seeing that. We
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are used giving me tills and we're so excited about rally.
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So the initial thought process and literally I lead in
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bed at night for probably seventy years think about these concepts,
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and so by having all those previous companies, in kind
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of my accident meeting all these different sectors, I have
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always learned more from people who have companies that are
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not in my industry they do. I have a buddy
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that owns a bunch of pizza restaurants, and I learned
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more tidbits from him. I have another buddy owns in
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h VC company, and the business ideas I hear from him,
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I'm like, oh my gosh, I could totally apply that
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to what I'm doing. And then the other piece is
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when I talk to people who are not entrepreneurs, who
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are not investors. They lead foundations, they lead universities, they're
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teachers in K through twelve, they're policy makers. They all
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have these different perspectives, right, They have these different experiences,
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these different professional situations that have shaped the way they
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think about things. And when you get cross sector, disperate
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stakeholder people in one place at one time, we like
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to think of rally as where global innovation convenes, and
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you get all those people in place at one time,
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magic happens and a lot of people leave rally and
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they're like, I don't know what it was, but it
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was awesome, and I couldn't put my finger on it.
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And I think the finger on it piece is when
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we go to conferences. Historically it's a conference, right, it's
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a manufacturing conference, it's a marketing conference. It's whatever we
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and with the world. No longer it can be thought
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of in sectors or stakeholders that live in their silos.
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It is converging. And like, literally, though I don't know
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if you feel the same way about like the last
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nine months, Literally we are accelerating. Like this moment we're
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talking right now, it is the slowest rate of change
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that you and I will ever experience. Right tomorrow we
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wake up, it's gonna be faster, and and so like
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it just seems if you had to be something different
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for us to experience each other right in each other's
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learnings and experiences in a in a in a different way, right,
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And so we talk about these words like collision, convergence, curiosity, vulnerability,
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like the theme this year's creative curiosity, especially with AI. Right,
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we can't believe what we see, we better be checking
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it two or three or four different ways. And so
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that was kind of the premise of by accident, all
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those businesses over twenty seven years, and then thinking about
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this middle quarter of the country being such a big
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part of the global economy, and yet people historically refer
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to it as flyover states. I summarily and just for
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all the listeners out there, we are summarily rejecting today
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we shall never refer to the middle quarter the United
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States ever again as flyover states. Right, there are a
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lot of there's a lot of amazing things happening out
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here and where we can partner right with companies on
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the coasts, companies across the globe in very efficient, effective ways.
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And so that's whole that's kind of the whole premise
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of how RALLY came about. If you don't mind, I'll
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rally off some stats real quick on the first two
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years of Rally.
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No please, I mean I love that show. It's like
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my favorite conference for the whole year I was, I was, yeah,
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I would love you.
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So in the first two years of Rally, we've had
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nearly seven thousand people come from twelve countries, thirty nine states,
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five profenss, ten one million dollar pitch winners, two hundred
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ninety seven vcs, twenty seven point six billion dollars in AUM,
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over fifty thousand collisions or meetings that we could track happened.
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And there's a bunch of other staffs, but like that's
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some of the high level staffs. We always have amazing
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speakers like yourself come, they've done amazing things. We bring
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in some keynotes that are there are big names. We've
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had people like Peyton Manning and Magic Johnson, Tea White,
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Crystal Washington, Marcus Lamonis. I'm forgetting several of the big keynotes.
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We got some ball or keynotes land up for this
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year too that will be announcing soon.
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Yeah, I'm excited about it. I mean, I'm I'm definitely going.
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I hope I could speak again. I know that you
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guys don't usually accept people the second time, but but
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it was like so much fun. I just I was like,
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I'm going to go either way.
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Well, we just keep it fresh, right, so like we
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tried to repeat the same speakers every year gap year.
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That's right. Now, you're gonna make me feel bad.
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No no, no, no, no no no no, I didn't
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mean to do that.
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I'm sorry. You have a new book out, maybe we
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have a book signing or something.
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Yeah, that'd be that would be awesome. Yeah, I sent
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you the book. I don't know if you guess I
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got it.
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I love it. It's awesome. Yeah, did you say that?
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I put a gold plated one hundred dollars bill in there?
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Very very cool.
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Okay, So rally, best show I've been to, best speakers.
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The exhibit hall is epic. I mean, the whole thing
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is really really, really well put together. Shout out from
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my friend Troy, who just smashed it. Yeah, just smash
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it out there. In closing, let's do a couple more questions.
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I know you're busy, Just give me two more questions
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real quick. What emerging trends or technologies are you most
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excited about outside of AI, because obviously you know everybody's
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talking about AI when you think about the future of entrepreneurship.
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So outside of AI. Okay, so one, just one quick stet.
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I have to see I just saw the other day.
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You've got salesforce revenue for ft E three eighty seven thousand,
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and now the average AI companies training towards like three
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point eight million revenue for f TOE. That's that's pretty
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The impact that's gonna have on the market is gonna
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be insane. Uh. The trend I'm most excited about is
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the convergence. So this cross sector idea, So injecting innovation
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into hard product you know, so you think about you know,
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sports tech for example, right, how we you know, can
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inject you know, you're injecting software now into hard devices
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or batteries or just think of any like age ole
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thing that could be a seat at a stadium and
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how you inject sound into the seat right that infistrates
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your body right with with uh with waves, right with
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energy right, not a speaker. So those kinds of things
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I find really fascinating, and we're seeing more and more
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of it. It feels like every week.
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What do you think of industrial transformation, you know the
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concept of going back to the industrial age and redoing everything.
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Yes, so we just I mean we just had a
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pitch just a little bit ago that battery manufacturing. They
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take this massive set of ovens and all this equipment
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and all this these p fast, awful chemicals, remove it
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from the equation, a whole different way to manufacture. I'm sorry,
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I know there's no video in this podcast. I'm waving
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with my hands here are I But basically, you take
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a think about a massive line that's that's you know,
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however many feet long and compresses it to let's call
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it fifteen percent of the size. That is really fun
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and sexy. Or there's a company Northern Indiana called Smoker
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Craft and they pontoons. You think of pontoon's pretty simple, right, Well,
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actually it's not the pontoon where it curves up and
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comes in to the point of the pontoons on the
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front of the boat are is a very shape. It's
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there's no common shape for it. And so how you
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inject robotics into that to be able to now weld
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those right with with And they're also going to keep
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the old the old craftsmen on one line so they
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never lose that craftsmanship. But all the rest of the
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expansion is being done through robotics. So I think the
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industrial how innovation will impact the Industrial Revolution from you know,
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one hundred years ago is going to be fascinating. Yeah.
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I mean, if you think about what an impact the
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Industrial Revolution had to the United States, imagine that happening
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again but with robotics and AI I mean, holy smokes, right,
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this is.
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If you think about the the agricultural revolution took hundreds
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of years, that was centuries lasted centuries, right, The Industrial
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revolution lasted decades, the digital revolution lasted years. The AI
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revolution is happening literally in hours, minutes.
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It's it's just the acceleration is just out of out
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of it. I mean, speaking of the book, I was
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thinking how much easier it would have been if I
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hadn't shot GDP when I was writing that book. I mean,
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I'll bet people are writing future books with that, you know,
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because it's so much easier. Last question, what do you
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see the future of RALLY and Elevate Ventures over the
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next five to ten years?
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Yep, So the next five or ten years for RALLY,
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we want to be the indisputed best innovation conference on
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the planet period full stop. We would love to see
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that organically grow to about one hundred thousand people. And
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so right now we're in a thirty five hundred to
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we'll have well, for sure, I have thirty five hundred
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people this year, could be as high as four or
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five thousand, and we hope that organically grows to about
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one hundred thousand people in the next ten years and
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to be just be known as that is where you
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go for innovation, convening, cross sector disper stakeholders where Magic
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Happens is one and then for Ladventures, our plan is
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to have a billion dollars in assets center management in
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ten years and we're launching the next step of that
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as we're launching the first ever growth fund headquartered in
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the state of Indiana, and UH we'll have an Indiana
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focus in a middle quarter or a United States focus
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of investing in cross sector innovative companies. So I'll be
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a two hundred million dollar fund. The twenty five million
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dollar InCor is in place, and we'll get ready to
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go to market to raise that fund.
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Tof I really appreciate your time and energy. Thank you
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so much for joining the podcast very much.
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Hey, it's been honor greg I'm humbled UH to join
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and it's great to see you in person today, same year.
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And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast.
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If you enjoy the show, please leave a five star
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00:17:40.920 --> 00:17:44.680
review on Apple or Spotify. Founders, as a thank you
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for leading the change, I'm offering free access to visionaries
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00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:52.519
by Gregory Shepherd, a one stop platform with an Academy
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00:17:52.759 --> 00:17:55.920
Investor match, grant Finder, Pitchfinder, and a whole lot more.
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00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:01.680
Please visit Gregory shepherd dot com and you Code Founders
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00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:05.559
all capital for free access to the platform until next time.
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I'm a state, my friends.
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The Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd is brought to
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you by Startupscience dot Io. Founders can log on to
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00:18:16.680 --> 00:18:21.680
startupscience dot io and use code Forbes to get free access.
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To connect and find out more about greg go to
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00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:29.880
Gregory sheepherd dot com. The Startup Science Podcast is a
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00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:31.799
production of Forbes Books.
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00:00:01.520 --> 00:00:06.120
Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd,
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00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:10.519
brought to you by Startupscience dot Io. Greg is an
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00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:14.800
entrepreneur who's built and sold twelve businesses, a recipient of
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00:00:14.919 --> 00:00:19.199
four private equity awards, featured ted X speaker and Ben
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Bella Publishing and Penguin Random House author. Peer's Gregory Sheppard.
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I'm back with Tof Day, the CEO of the Elevated Ventures.
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We've been talking about his incredible journey from growing up
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in a strict household on a small farm to becoming
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a powerhouse in the venture capital world. So TOF you're
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hyper focused on building a statewide ecosystem in Indiana. Some
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people listening might wonder, you have to be in Indiana
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to get funded? Can I be in another state? How
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does Elevate Ventures work with regards to your hyper focus
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on Indiana?
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So Elevi Venture's mothership so preseed Seed Series, a innovation
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driven companies have to either be headquartered or have a
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significant presence in Indiana. So you could the CEO could
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be in Boston. Then we have companies like this today.
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The CEO could be in Boston, but it makes sense
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for all of their buildout or expansion or operations to
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be in Indiana because of their customer base for example,
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or access to researchers, or access to talent or whatever
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it might be, access to distribution. So many different reasons
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that would come like so rally, for example, we run
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one of the world's largest pitch competitions, right a five
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million dollar pitch competition, and so four of the five
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winners in year one have all set up shop, either
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moved or set up all their expansion in Indiana because
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it's much more cost efficient for them to do so,
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whether it's cost of operations is much more efficient, access
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to talent, partners, distribution, customers. They were shocked when they
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came here and saw how easy it was to navigate
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the ecosystem. And then this year, this past year of RALLY,
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all five or are two of them were winners of
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two of the winners were from Indiana. The other three
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are moving here setting up manufacturing. In one case, for example,
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what people don't realize about Indiana is it's actually the
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innovation capital of the world. So if you're listening to this,
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go google Innovation Capital the World or where is the
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Innovation capital the world, and you will see Indiana on
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the first page mentioned with other folks like you know,
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Switzerland that comes up as the most innovative country, and
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of course you have San Francisco pops up in other markets.
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And I'm curious, actually, if you're on your computer right now,
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real time to see if it comes up, Greg, I
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hope you.
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Did it came up?
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It did?
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It came up, and it shows that it's trademarked.
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There you go. So it must be true if it's
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on the first page of Google, that they were in
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the basic cap of the world. But then people say, well,
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how could you say that. Well, global economists talk about
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a concept called the productivity boom, and the productivity boom
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is basically all about the disruption of data technology faster
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than ever with all sectors. They believe that a center
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of this global phenomenon is going to occur in the
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middle core of the United States, mainly because of the
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proximity of industries with one another in cost structure. So
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if that's true, that I would submit that actually Indiana
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is at epicenter. And why so there are seven ingredients
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why infrastructure, talent, mission, critical industry, technology, lifestyle, cost of living,
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regulatory environment. Now I'll just rattle off a few. In infrastructure,
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we have the number one ranked infrastructure in the United States.
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We have the number one ranked airport in North America
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like twelve thirteen years running. We have the only premier
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inland port system. We move, make and manage things better
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than anybody else. Talent. We have the number one undergraduate
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engineering college in the country twenty seven years running per
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US News and World Report. That's Rose Hollmond Purdue as
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number one ranked online engineering multiple number one online engineering degrees.
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I use the largest medical school, Notre Dame's largest Catholic university.
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The list goes on. With talent. We produced the world's
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greatest talent. We produced the first man on the moon.
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We had the number one highest valued pharma company in
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the world, the number one pure play ad company, the
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number two animal health company, the number two healthcare system.
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Where the orthipedes capital the world, were the RV capital
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the world, or the advanced manufacturing capital the world, or
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the wood capital the world. Where the amateur sports capital
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the world, or the racing capital the world. These are
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all real stats. We go into technology. Over one hundred
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and twenty six billion in capitol announcements. It just the
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last eight years, three federal Tech Hub designations, we had
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eight Fortune five hundred companies, multiple billion dollar plus companies.
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We get in a lifestyle and cost of living. We
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have the most affordable place to live, the best place
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for college grads, number one, best place to start a
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company two years ago, number two last year, Safest place
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to live, best place to raise a family. The list
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goes on, the number one children's museum in the world,
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and then a few years ago ranked number one for
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regiatory environment. Ninety four percent of the legislation that we
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pass is passing them by Parson fashion. And that's just
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a tip of the iceberg. I could go on for
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another thirty minutes about number one top five rankings, but
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the world just doesn't know it because we don't talk
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about it. So that's why we're so excited to welcome
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the world to our home. And we love doing business
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with people, you know, outside of the state as well
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and across the nation, indeed across the globe. But I
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think the future is it's really hard. You think about
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access and opportunity and you go to markets like San Francisco, Boston,
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New York, Austin. I love all these markets. These are
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all wonderful markets, right, And I've I've spent time in
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all those markets. I've had offices in some of them.
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They're all wonderful, But most of them you either get
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access or you get opportunity. You don't get both. In
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in Indiana you can get both access and opportunity much
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more efficiently. And you want to go to the big city,
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you want to go to the mountains, you want to
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go to the ocean, You pop on a plane. You're
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there in four hours.
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Hmm. And it's center right, So it's located so it's
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easy to get around.
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I can get to New York to Boston easy. I
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can get to San Francisco easy. I get to Austin easy,
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Salt Lake City, Seattle, right. We get to eat those
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places on drug.
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Flight, all the meccas. I wanted. I want to shift
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ears again because I'm really excited about talking about Rally. Yes,
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I had the opportunity to go speak at Rally. I
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had never heard of the show before, and I got
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a contest.
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By the way, your session was awesome. People were talking
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about that for weeks afterwards.
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Oh, thank you so much. I really really appreciate it.
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Break Yeah, but thank you, Thank you. I really appreciate that.
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I mean I went there and I was like, I
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was like, okay, I'm going to Indiana. I have to
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admit I'd never been to Indianapolis before, so I was
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like pretty excited, you know, because of the speedway and everything.
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I was like, this is this is so cool? And
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I went there and I could not believe the conference.
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I was like, this is like a legit San Francisco
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Silicon Valley conference YEP in Indianapolis, and like you said,
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it's a it's a it's a secret.
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Right.
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I went there and I was just blown away. And
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so I mean, you're the guy that started this whole thing, right,
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and it's one of the best conferences I've ever been to.
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What made you come up with this idea? How did
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you turn it into this amazing conference? I mean, what's
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behind this whole thing? Because I was like floored. I
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had no I did not expect that. It was just
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absolutely amazing.
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So well, thank you so much for seeing that. We
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are used giving me tills and we're so excited about rally.
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So the initial thought process and literally I lead in
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bed at night for probably seventy years think about these concepts,
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and so by having all those previous companies, in kind
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of my accident meeting all these different sectors, I have
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always learned more from people who have companies that are
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not in my industry they do. I have a buddy
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that owns a bunch of pizza restaurants, and I learned
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more tidbits from him. I have another buddy owns in
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h VC company, and the business ideas I hear from him,
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I'm like, oh my gosh, I could totally apply that
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to what I'm doing. And then the other piece is
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when I talk to people who are not entrepreneurs, who
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are not investors. They lead foundations, they lead universities, they're
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teachers in K through twelve, they're policy makers. They all
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have these different perspectives, right, They have these different experiences,
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these different professional situations that have shaped the way they
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think about things. And when you get cross sector, disperate
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stakeholder people in one place at one time, we like
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to think of rally as where global innovation convenes, and
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you get all those people in place at one time,
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magic happens and a lot of people leave rally and
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they're like, I don't know what it was, but it
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was awesome, and I couldn't put my finger on it.
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And I think the finger on it piece is when
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we go to conferences. Historically it's a conference, right, it's
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a manufacturing conference, it's a marketing conference. It's whatever we
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and with the world. No longer it can be thought
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of in sectors or stakeholders that live in their silos.
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It is converging. And like, literally, though I don't know
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if you feel the same way about like the last
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nine months, Literally we are accelerating. Like this moment we're
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talking right now, it is the slowest rate of change
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that you and I will ever experience. Right tomorrow we
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wake up, it's gonna be faster, and and so like
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it just seems if you had to be something different
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for us to experience each other right in each other's
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learnings and experiences in a in a in a different way, right,
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And so we talk about these words like collision, convergence, curiosity, vulnerability,
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like the theme this year's creative curiosity, especially with AI. Right,
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we can't believe what we see, we better be checking
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it two or three or four different ways. And so
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that was kind of the premise of by accident, all
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those businesses over twenty seven years, and then thinking about
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this middle quarter of the country being such a big
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part of the global economy, and yet people historically refer
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to it as flyover states. I summarily and just for
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all the listeners out there, we are summarily rejecting today
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we shall never refer to the middle quarter the United
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States ever again as flyover states. Right, there are a
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lot of there's a lot of amazing things happening out
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here and where we can partner right with companies on
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the coasts, companies across the globe in very efficient, effective ways.
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And so that's whole that's kind of the whole premise
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of how RALLY came about. If you don't mind, I'll
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rally off some stats real quick on the first two
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years of Rally.
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No please, I mean I love that show. It's like
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my favorite conference for the whole year I was, I was, yeah,
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I would love you.
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So in the first two years of Rally, we've had
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nearly seven thousand people come from twelve countries, thirty nine states,
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five profenss, ten one million dollar pitch winners, two hundred
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ninety seven vcs, twenty seven point six billion dollars in AUM,
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over fifty thousand collisions or meetings that we could track happened.
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And there's a bunch of other staffs, but like that's
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some of the high level staffs. We always have amazing
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speakers like yourself come, they've done amazing things. We bring
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in some keynotes that are there are big names. We've
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had people like Peyton Manning and Magic Johnson, Tea White,
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Crystal Washington, Marcus Lamonis. I'm forgetting several of the big keynotes.
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We got some ball or keynotes land up for this
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year too that will be announcing soon.
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Yeah, I'm excited about it. I mean, I'm I'm definitely going.
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I hope I could speak again. I know that you
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guys don't usually accept people the second time, but but
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it was like so much fun. I just I was like,
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I'm going to go either way.
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Well, we just keep it fresh, right, so like we
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tried to repeat the same speakers every year gap year.
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That's right. Now, you're gonna make me feel bad.
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No no, no, no, no no no no, I didn't
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mean to do that.
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I'm sorry. You have a new book out, maybe we
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have a book signing or something.
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Yeah, that'd be that would be awesome. Yeah, I sent
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you the book. I don't know if you guess I
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got it.
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I love it. It's awesome. Yeah, did you say that?
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I put a gold plated one hundred dollars bill in there?
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Very very cool.
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Okay, So rally, best show I've been to, best speakers.
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The exhibit hall is epic. I mean, the whole thing
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is really really, really well put together. Shout out from
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my friend Troy, who just smashed it. Yeah, just smash
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it out there. In closing, let's do a couple more questions.
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I know you're busy, Just give me two more questions
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real quick. What emerging trends or technologies are you most
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excited about outside of AI, because obviously you know everybody's
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talking about AI when you think about the future of entrepreneurship.
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So outside of AI. Okay, so one, just one quick stet.
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I have to see I just saw the other day.
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You've got salesforce revenue for ft E three eighty seven thousand,
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and now the average AI companies training towards like three
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point eight million revenue for f TOE. That's that's pretty
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The impact that's gonna have on the market is gonna
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be insane. Uh. The trend I'm most excited about is
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the convergence. So this cross sector idea, So injecting innovation
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into hard product you know, so you think about you know,
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sports tech for example, right, how we you know, can
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inject you know, you're injecting software now into hard devices
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or batteries or just think of any like age ole
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thing that could be a seat at a stadium and
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how you inject sound into the seat right that infistrates
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your body right with with uh with waves, right with
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energy right, not a speaker. So those kinds of things
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I find really fascinating, and we're seeing more and more
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of it. It feels like every week.
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What do you think of industrial transformation, you know the
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concept of going back to the industrial age and redoing everything.
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Yes, so we just I mean we just had a
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pitch just a little bit ago that battery manufacturing. They
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take this massive set of ovens and all this equipment
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and all this these p fast, awful chemicals, remove it
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from the equation, a whole different way to manufacture. I'm sorry,
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I know there's no video in this podcast. I'm waving
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with my hands here are I But basically, you take
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a think about a massive line that's that's you know,
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however many feet long and compresses it to let's call
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it fifteen percent of the size. That is really fun
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and sexy. Or there's a company Northern Indiana called Smoker
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Craft and they pontoons. You think of pontoon's pretty simple, right, Well,
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actually it's not the pontoon where it curves up and
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comes in to the point of the pontoons on the
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front of the boat are is a very shape. It's
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there's no common shape for it. And so how you
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inject robotics into that to be able to now weld
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those right with with And they're also going to keep
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the old the old craftsmen on one line so they
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never lose that craftsmanship. But all the rest of the
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expansion is being done through robotics. So I think the
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industrial how innovation will impact the Industrial Revolution from you know,
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one hundred years ago is going to be fascinating. Yeah.
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I mean, if you think about what an impact the
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Industrial Revolution had to the United States, imagine that happening
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again but with robotics and AI I mean, holy smokes, right,
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this is.
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If you think about the the agricultural revolution took hundreds
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of years, that was centuries lasted centuries, right, The Industrial
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revolution lasted decades, the digital revolution lasted years. The AI
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revolution is happening literally in hours, minutes.
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It's it's just the acceleration is just out of out
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of it. I mean, speaking of the book, I was
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thinking how much easier it would have been if I
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hadn't shot GDP when I was writing that book. I mean,
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I'll bet people are writing future books with that, you know,
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because it's so much easier. Last question, what do you
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see the future of RALLY and Elevate Ventures over the
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next five to ten years?
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Yep, So the next five or ten years for RALLY,
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we want to be the indisputed best innovation conference on
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the planet period full stop. We would love to see
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that organically grow to about one hundred thousand people. And
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so right now we're in a thirty five hundred to
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we'll have well, for sure, I have thirty five hundred
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people this year, could be as high as four or
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five thousand, and we hope that organically grows to about
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one hundred thousand people in the next ten years and
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to be just be known as that is where you
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go for innovation, convening, cross sector disper stakeholders where Magic
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Happens is one and then for Ladventures, our plan is
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to have a billion dollars in assets center management in
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ten years and we're launching the next step of that
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as we're launching the first ever growth fund headquartered in
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the state of Indiana, and UH we'll have an Indiana
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focus in a middle quarter or a United States focus
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of investing in cross sector innovative companies. So I'll be
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a two hundred million dollar fund. The twenty five million
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dollar InCor is in place, and we'll get ready to
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go to market to raise that fund.
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Tof I really appreciate your time and energy. Thank you
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so much for joining the podcast very much.
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Hey, it's been honor greg I'm humbled UH to join
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and it's great to see you in person today, same year.
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And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast.
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If you enjoy the show, please leave a five star
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00:17:40.920 --> 00:17:44.680
review on Apple or Spotify. Founders, as a thank you
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00:17:44.839 --> 00:17:48.240
for leading the change, I'm offering free access to visionaries
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00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:52.519
by Gregory Shepherd, a one stop platform with an Academy
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00:17:52.759 --> 00:17:55.920
Investor match, grant Finder, Pitchfinder, and a whole lot more.
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00:17:56.400 --> 00:18:01.680
Please visit Gregory shepherd dot com and you Code Founders
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00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:05.559
all capital for free access to the platform until next time.
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00:18:05.880 --> 00:18:07.000
I'm a state, my friends.
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The Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepherd is brought to
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you by Startupscience dot Io. Founders can log on to
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To connect and find out more about greg go to
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Gregory sheepherd dot com. The Startup Science Podcast is a
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production of Forbes Books.
