112 Bloom | August/September 2017 | magbloom.com High-Tech Bloomington ONBy Susan THEM. Brackney • Photography byRISE Stephen Sproull (l-r) Indiana University Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Informa- tion Offi cer Brad Wheeler, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton, and Bloomington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) President and CEO Lynn Coyne stand in front of the video wall in the Marshal H. Wrubel Commons at IU’s Cyber- infrastructure Building (CIB), 10th St. and the Ind. 45/46 Bypass. magbloom.com | August/September 2017 | Bloom 113 hink of Bloomington’s technology firms as wildflowers in a bur- geoning Silicon prairie. Some are already large and showy. Others, small but promising, are just starting to Tblossom. It’s no accident that a surprising number of high-tech companies are thriv- ing here. For the last several years, a multi- tude of stakeholders have been seeding the city with infrastructure, venture capital, accelerator programs, and more—and it’s starting to pay o. Among the nation’s small metropolitan areas, Bloomington held steady at No. 2 for its concentra- tion of high-tech gross domestic product (GDP) in both 2014 and 2015, according to the Milken Institute Center for Jobs and Human Capital. GDP is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of the economy. Just how many tech companies presently call Bloomington home? That depends on how you define tech. “People like to say tech, but what is tech?” asks Lynn Coyne, Bloom- online job listings that local tech compa- You have to feed them all until you get that ington Economic Development Corporation nies are encouraged to post via two BEDC one big thing. I think once Indiana had that (BEDC) president and CEO. “We have a very, subgroups, the Bloomington Technology ExactTarget success story—ExactTarget very broad definition. Some people could see Partnership and the Bloomington Life sold to giant Salesforce—that’s when we all it as software development or application Science Partnership. started saying, ‘Indiana can do tech.’” development, but it could also be medical ExactTarget, a digital marketing firm, device development. There’s software as a Indiana on the high-tech map was founded in Indianapolis in 2000. Just service. There’s software as a product. There No matter how you define tech, building an 13 years later, the company would be ac- are so many ranges of what tech means, and innovation culture and community requires quired by the San Francisco-based market- that’s the wonderful thing about it.” patience. “It takes about 10 years to even ing juggernaut Salesforce for a whopping Coyne estimates 150 tech-related jobs get to your first real success,” BEDC Vice $2.5 billion. Although Salesforce consoli- were filled in Bloomington in 2016. He President Dana Palazzo notes. “It’s that eco- dated some Indianapolis-based positions, loosely tracks these numbers through free, nomic gardening of all of these little things. the company remains committed to staying 114 Bloom | August/September 2017 | magbloom.com 8,100 custom-programming and systems- Bloomington’s original startups design jobs, Forbes reports. But Bloomington has benefited substan- But will Indianapolis’ recent successes tially from a couple of its own historic head steal Bloomington’s tech-hub thunder? Bloom- starts. By hand-shaping his first medical ington Mayor John Hamilton doesn’t think so. devices in the early 1960s, Bill Cook would “Those are not mutually exclusive,” Hamilton set into motion a flourishing medical tech- says. “What’s good for Indianapolis can be good nology industry. These days, the Bloom- for Bloomington, too, as people just look at the ington Life Sciences Partnership reports, Midwest and Indiana generally.” “Bloomington’s concentration of employ- Indiana University Vice President for ment in the life sciences is six times greater Information Technology and Chief Informa- than the U.S. average, and employment in tion O¦cer Brad Wheeler agrees. “Firms the technology sector has grown by over 80 like Salesforce are choosing not to just buy percent in recent years.” the company and pull everybody out,” he And, after making a successful pitch says. “Chase Tower is going to be renamed to operate a dedicated Internet2 Global Salesforce Tower. Tech businesses doubling Research Network Operations Center in down here is a huge, positive signal. It’s very 1998, Indiana University became another legitimizing to other firms to see those com- of Bloomington’s largest tech employers. panies making investments in Indiana.” “You would’ve thought that it would’ve had Of course, California has enjoyed one a better chance of going somewhere else, heck of a head start. “Silicon Valley has eight because, Bloomington? Indianapolis? Are generations or 10 generations of compa- you kidding me? These weren’t tech hubs,” nies ahead of us, because they started with Wheeler says. “But we got that deal and, so, silicon, literally, back in post-World War that started o with about seven or eight II,” admits Kelly Schwedland, an entrepre- network engineers. Now, it’s a little shy of in Indiana, citing, in part, the quality and neur-in-residence at Elevate Ventures, an (top) The Global Research Network Operations Center at number of highly educated potential Indianapolis-based startup accelerator and IU’s Cyberinfrastructure Building (CIB); (above, opposite and this page, l-r) the Data Center at the CIB; BEDC Vice employees here. venture capital firm. “They’ve had com- President Dana Palazzo; IU’s Big Red II supercomputer, The $2.5 billion deal helped put India- panies grow up and exit, companies grow which has a processing speed of one thousand trillion napolis on the high-tech map. In March up and exit, companies grow up and exit. floating-point operations per second (one petaflops); Bill Cook, who co-founded medical equipment manufacturer 2017, Forbes Magazine ranked Indianapolis We’re in the early stages of that.” Schwed- Cook Group in Bloomington with his wife, Gayle, in 1963. fifth out of 15 American cities creating the land made these remarks in April during a Photo by Steve Raymer most tech jobs. Salesforce alone expected venture capital panel at Bloomington’s an- to add 800 jobs to its 1,600-employee o¦ce nual technology conference, The Combine, in Indianapolis. Since 2006, the job count which, according to its website, explores at Indianapolis-based tech companies is “the entrepreneurial spark at the inter- up nearly 70 percent, with 1,700 percent section of community, culture, creativity, growth in internet-based businesses and capital, and code.” magbloom.com | August/September 2017 | Bloom 115 (clockwise from top left) Liscio COO Meredith Root Photo by Rodney Margi- son; Darren Root, CEO of RootAdvisors, Root Works, and Liscio Photo by Stephen Sproull; the new 6,000-square-foot building housing Rootworks’ Com- pany Care Team and Liscio’s sales and support staff. Photo by Rodney Margison 20 years old, but we employ about 115 total in its operations, and we pull in $12 to $15 million a year in contracts and grants.” The Global Research Network Opera- tions Center continues to carry out public sector research. Wheeler adds, “We just renewed the contract with Internet2, and we just got an award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, so, while it was not on the commercial side, it has grown 100-plus jobs here.” Additionally, there are 560 University Information Technology Services (UITS) employees operating out of IU’s Cyberin- frastructure Building. “For our shop, I think we’re probably one of the largest, if not the largest, tech employers,” Wheeler says. “We’re about 1,060 full-time employees for UITS, and we have a large number of employees who work on research contracts and grants. We have a pretty substantial tech footprint here.” A company both here and there Another of Bloomington’s original startups, RootAdvisors, is making new forays in the tech industry. What began as a traditional accounting shop 30 years ago has evolved to provide business-to-business education and creative support through its RootWorks spin-o and, more recently, via Liscio, a new software company with physical o¦ces in both Silicon Valley and Bloomington. Darren Root, chief executive o¦cer of RootAdvisors, RootWorks, and Liscio, ex- plains, “With RootWorks, we've been build- ing and hosting websites for companies ing adjacent to the original Root o¦ces, Root likens that product to the Star- across North America for the last 10 years, there is now room for further expansion. bucks mobile app he uses to grab his so we’ve been doing a lot of software devel- “Our new addition will house what we call morning coee. “We’re trying to create opment, and now we’ve actually launched a our Company Care Team for Rootworks, simple, elegant, and smooth relationships software company and we’re going toward a which is sales, marketing, video production, for accounting firms and for customers,” consumer product.” our director of operations, and me as CEO,” he says. As for the name? “I love Italian The 6,000-square-foot RootWorks and he says. “In addition, it will house our COO things, and I was Googling around. The RootAdvisors o¦ces on South Walnut were and sales and support of Liscio.” word liscio means ‘simple, elegant, and built for the company in 1996. “We didn’t Liscio’s COO is Meredith Root, Darren smooth’ in Italian.” occupy all of the original building at incep- Root’s 28-year-old daughter. “I’m the CEO, Root had an existing Palo Alto, Califor- tion,” Root says. “We grew into the space but she’s really running the day-to-day oper- nia, connection through prior investment over time.” With the recent construction of ations for Liscio and has been instrumental interests, and two of his Liscio partners another 6,000-square-foot, two-story build- in the development of the product,” he says.