1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You have to build around capital-efficient principles. What about companies in the Midwest?

Max Brickman: Absolutely. We have one called Claira. Katie Hall is the founder. It does competency-based evaluation of your current workforce. When you look at a map of Fortune 1,000 companies, they’re predominantly in the Midwest. There’s an unfair advantage that a lot of these companies have by being in the Midwest. Your customers are going to be more interested. We are seeing it more and more.

Beyond companies that we are investing in, we are seeing more and more companies we’ve invested in that are relocating here or setting up secondary operations here. It’s a lot less expensive than the coast.

Sramana Mitra: How many SaaS companies are headquartered in the Midwest or have secondary operations in the Midwest?

Max Brickman: In Columbus, it’s a daily occurrence that we’re seeing companies relocating or setting up operations here. There have been some pretty big exits from Columbus. There’re a lot of big wins in Indianapolis.

Sramana Mitra: Are we talking thousands of companies?

Max Brickman: In the thousands yes.

Sramana Mitra: Great universities too. A lot of people end up staying close to their universities when they come out.

Max Brickman: Absolutely. OSU has 50,000 plus students. Michigan too. You have these massive schools. That’s why Intel is ready to spend $10 billion on the largest public-private projects in US history just outside of Columbus. They’re going to be hiring 10,000 people.

Sramana Mitra: What is your relationship with the universities in the area? If you look at the history of Silicon Valley, Stanford has played a very dominant role. In the Boston area, MIT has played that role. Although Boston never became that big a hub. What is the equivalent of that in the Midwest?

Max Brickman: RSU’s engineering program has more students than Yale. The scale of these schools is significantly larger than others. There’s certainly more that a lot of these schools can do on the commercialization side. That said, there have been some pretty major companies that have come out, particularly in healthcare and life sciences. The new cancer center here is going to be the second largest in the country.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. Silicon Valley’s cost structure is not sustainable for most companies. Even if you want to have a headquarter in Silicon Valley, the bulk of the hiring is not happening in Silicon Valley anymore. It’s happening somewhere else.

Max Brickman: It’s a fraction of the cost and you have major pipelines of talent that’s coming out of these schools.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures
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