In this episode of See Yourself IN, host Casey Harrison talks with Scott Dorsey, managing partner at High Alpha. Scott discusses his entrepreneurial journey, his passion for the tech industry, and the importance of fostering a thriving tech community in Indiana. He highlights transferable skills that are valuable in tech careers and offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
5 Key Takeaways:
For more resources on the jobs, companies, and opportunities in Indiana, visit
https://www.cicpindiana.com/syi/
In this episode of See Yourself IN, host Casey Harrison talks with Scott Dorsey, managing partner at High Alpha. Scott discusses his entrepreneurial journey, his passion for the tech industry, and the importance of fostering a thriving tech community in Indiana. He highlights transferable skills that are valuable in tech careers and offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
5 Key Takeaways:
For more resources on the jobs, companies, and opportunities in Indiana, visit
https://www.cicpindiana.com/syi/
Casey Harrison: Welcome to today's episode of See Yourself IN where you will learn about cool jobs, people and companies in Indiana. Hear about the skills that will help you find success. And most importantly, we hope to inspire you to dream big. I'm Casey Harrison, your host. On today's show, we're going to dive into Indiana's advanced industries and why they're important.
We'll talk about skills that are transferable across jobs and industries, and we'll determine some of the best ways that you can begin exploring these opportunities. Today, I'm joined by Scott Dorsey. Scott is the managing partner at High Alpha, but his footprint can be seen all across Indiana's tech ecosystem.
On this episode of See Yourself IN, Scott is going to share more about his entrepreneurial journey, his passion for the tech industry, and how he's working to cultivate a tech community right here in central Indiana.
Scott, we're thrilled to have you today on See Yourself IN.
Scott Dorsey: Thank you. Thrilled to be on the program.
Casey Harrison: As someone who's been a big fan of your journey long before I had the opportunity to meet you, I know that you've lived in a few different locations across the country. Can you talk to us a little bit about why you're still in Indiana?
Scott Dorsey: Sure. Yeah, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, great suburb called Naperville. And then lived all over the country and then found my way to Indianapolis nearly 25 years ago. The big pull actually is my wife is from Greenfield and she has a remarkable family here in the Indianapolis area and kind of always dreamed of raising her family near her parents and sisters.
And then I was fortunate, my brother-in-law, Chris Baggott was one of my two co-founders at ExactTarget. He was already here in Indy. So it was like a beautiful combination of a family pull and then really the right place to start ExactTarget.
Casey Harrison: Yeah, it's incredible. So in the late two thousands, you founded ExactTarget.
Maybe talk to us a little bit about what ExactTarget was at the time.
Scott Dorsey: So we started ExactTarget in kind of late 2000, early 2001 with a small idea around helping businesses leverage the power of the internet to connect with their customers through email marketing. You know, over time the vision expanded to all forms of digital marketing, but the early seed of an idea was permission based email could be a very powerful tool for small businesses to build deeper connections with their customers.
Casey Harrison: So at the time, Indianapolis did not have the tech footprint that we do today. And just to position that a little bit, TechPoint, which is the industry-led growth initiative for Indiana's digital innovation economy, reports that Indiana accounts today for 51 billion in economic impact, employing nearly 120,000 Hoosiers in the industry.
Furthermore, we're ranked 21st in the United States for tech employment. You have had a front seat and maybe even helped build that entire ecosystem. Did you foresee yourself going into the tech industry or this career path in high school?
Scott Dorsey: I really didn't. I really didn't. I love business, so I knew I wanted to study business in college. I ended up going to Indiana University undergraduate Kelley School of Business, and had just a phenomenal experience. But I was really business first, and I think that's one of the unique attributes of the ExactTarget story is that three of us who founded the company were all kind of business marketing minded.
None of us had a technical background. I had just finished my MBA at Kellogg, a part of Northwestern University and had really studied entrepreneurship and internet business models. But we were jumping in with the vision for building software for marketers, but having really no understanding or insight or experience in how to build software and how to build a scalable tech product.
Casey Harrison: What would you say? I mean, how do you figure that out as you go?
Scott Dorsey: A lot of trial and error, for sure. And just hiring super talented people. We were so fortunate over our journey at ExactTarget just to build a culture that very talented and driven people wanted to be a part of. And we really partnered very closely with all the credible universities throughout the state.
Hired a lot of engineers from Purdue, a lot of talented folks from IU, Notre Dame, Butler, Ball State, Rose Hulman. And along the way, Casey, was amazing. We had so much support from the city and the state of Indiana. I just kind of felt like everybody was cheering us on and talent was really, really important to us.
We also invested in an internship program and a rotational program for new college graduates. So we knew we didn't have a deep pool of tech talent already here in Indianapolis. So we had kind of a grow your own mindset and it worked out really, really well.
Casey Harrison: Oh, I'd say so. I mean, just to position this a little deeper, like you weren't a tech guy at the time, right? And it's no small feat that you then took your startup, knowing very little about tech and ended up having the largest tech acquisition in the state.
Scott Dorsey: It was an incredible journey. I mean, it really was. And, you know, the course of a 12 or 13 year journey from starting the company, lots of up and downs kind of muscled their way through the financial crisis in ‘08, ‘09.
And then we ended up going public in 2012 on the New York Stock Exchange, which was a complete out of body experience. We had a two week road show for the IPO ring, the opening bell. I got a chance to go on live to CNBC with Jim Cramer from Mad Money. And then, you know, about a year later, we sold the business to Salesforce.
So the journey was unbelievable and it's a testament to the just incredible talent and team that we built. And then the coaches, mentors, investors, and advisors that we were fortunate to attract to the business. I had such a support system, Casey. I had so much help and a really phenomenal executive leadership team that often knew more than I did along the way.
So it was an incredible learning experience.
Casey Harrison: And just such an incredible illustration of grow it yourself, right? I mean, you might not have had the exact skill sets you were looking for, but you found the right people with maybe the right attitudes or ambitions and you were able to cultivate that talent.
Scott Dorsey: 100%, you know, and there's something magical also about knowing you don't know everything, you know, just the, you don't know what you don't know. So I went into, in particular, the early years, but even the later years, just with a learning mindset, just knowing I had so much ground to make up. I'd never done this before and just asking a lot of good questions and surrounding yourself with the right people, I think it's really powerful.
Sometimes later in your career, I think you can get tricked into thinking you kind of know everything and it's almost better to be naive and a little fearless and just know that you want to absorb learning in every direction you can and learn from those that have been there before and have experience.
Casey Harrison: I think that's a great takeaway already, just for the people listening, is it's really important to continue learning.
Scott Dorsey: It really is. And at my stage of life, I'm doing a lot of coaching and mentoring of early stage software entrepreneurs, but I still make sure that I'm nurturing those who have mentored me over the years.
And in particular, as we lean more into the world of venture capital. We're nine years into our journey at High Alpha and we're still learning. We have a lot to learn. So I think it's important at every age and every stage of life that you put yourself on a new learning curve and you go find those mentors and coaches that can help you.
Casey Harrison: Perfectly said. So let's talk about that a little bit. You're still, you know, that acquisition was in 2012, right?
Scott Dorsey: It was 2013. 2013 and I stayed for about a year at Salesforce and left in fall of ‘14.
Casey Harrison: Okay. 10 years later, you're still in the tech industry. So talk to us a little bit about High Alpha and what you're doing today.
Scott Dorsey: Yeah, we love it. I started High Alpha with Kristian Anderson, Eric Tobias, and Mike Fitzgerald, three very close friends. And we had all worked with one another in one form or another kind of along the ExactTarget journey and we wanted to build a platform that we wish we had when we had started our companies of just the best set of tools, people and capital and resources to help entrepreneurs increase their probability of success.
So we've been one part venture studio, one part venture capital firm, and we start cloud companies and we also make investments in companies all throughout North America.
Casey Harrison: That's incredible. There are people listening who are trying to figure out what they want to do in life and if they can do that right here in Indiana. What are some of the recommendations you might give them as they think about their futures?
Scott Dorsey: Casey, I love the underlying theme of this program, See Yourself IN, so let's just start with that. Anyone can be in technology. If you're a software engineer, developer, data scientist, amazing, you're going to have a lot of opportunities within tech to jump in and write code, build amazing products. But tech companies need every functional area, need strong finance departments, HR, recruiting, customer service.
Today, actually is executive assistant day. EA can be a phenomenal career. So there's so many opportunities within tech, and I just would encourage our audience to think very broadly. Even if you don't have deep technical skills, tech companies can offer an amazing career pathway. And what I love about them is they're fast, they're high growth.
You have to be very adaptable. You have to learn quickly. You have to be able to pivot when things aren't going well. And those all create tremendous opportunities for growth and development.
Casey Harrison: Well, and you've touched on this in other places, but I'd love for you to speak on it here. Community has shifted some with the disruption of the pandemic and just the evolution that's followed of the workforce.
So can you talk a little bit about the tech ecosystem here in central Indiana and what community looks like in that space?
Scott Dorsey: Well, as you referenced earlier, Casey, we've come kind of light years from where we started 20-25 years ago with a phenomenal airport, direct flights to hubs like Austin, Salt Lake City and Silicon Valley. More capital than we've ever had before.
TechPoint is a powerhouse around talent programs and celebrating the accomplishments of our tech community. So we've come so far, but I think we're in a position now where we can't slow down. You know, we need to keep leaning into community and building support resources to help entrepreneurs have the best opportunity they can to break out and build big companies.
One of the elements I love so much about ExectTarget was just that we were a job creation engine. You know, we created 2,000 jobs, about 1,500 of them right here in downtown Indianapolis. These were high tech, high paying jobs for many people had not been in the tech industry previously. And that is, I think one of the real gems of building software and tech companies is they take people and they take amazing people, the power of the companies, and if you get them right, you can really create an incredible livelihood for so many people and in the process, lift up the community.
You know, we're really proud of being a downtown Indianapolis company, and I think it was not by accident that the more people we hired and the bigger we got, all of a sudden there were more local restaurants and more hotels being built, and you could just feel the prosperity and creativity of the downtown area really being lifted.
And I still hunger for more of that for our community.
Casey Harrison: It's incredible that all of this is happening right here in central Indiana because too often when we think about tech, we're thinking about the coasts, right? And so that growth and your ability to influence the creation of this industry right here in central Indiana, it's pretty incredible.
Scott Dorsey: Thank you. It was certainly true back in the day of ExactTarget that you could build a breakout tech company and a category leading tech company anywhere. It's even more true today. You know, I think geography has really been neutralized and many companies are hiring teams everywhere and anywhere. Teams today are very distributed, very much of a hybrid orientation.
So I think that puts even more pressure on us as a community to make sure our sense of place is phenomenal. That Indianapolis and Indiana is a beautiful place, an open place, affordable, and offers diversity and rich opportunity for everybody. So I think we have to keep really doubling down on that. The beauty and richness of our community to make sure this is where the most talented people want to live.
Casey Harrison: That's right. So, Scott, we recently spoke with Al Carroll, who's the president and CEO of IndyHub. And in that conversation, Al shared that he knew he wanted to be a CEO, period. He didn't have much direction on what he wanted to be doing, but he knew that he wanted to be in a space where he could lead people.
And I think we have a lot of folks listening who have that entrepreneurial spirit. You know it's like a flame inside of you where you just get excited about creating something that's your own. So what would you maybe say to those listening about how they can start cultivating their own path that's maybe different from other paths right here in Indiana?
Scott Dorsey: I had a similar feeling to Al coming out of graduate school. I really wanted to be CEO and being a founder ended up being my path. And you know, the really neat thing about a founder is you do have a lot of control over who you work with, your company name, your brand, the products you build, the direction you head.
But with that comes a lot of responsibility, also a lot of pressure as well. So I always encourage founders to think about, do you want to be a sole founder or would you like co-founders? For me, I really like working with others. I like teamwork. I really lean in on collaboration. So I've always started companies with co-founders who have a very different skill set orientation instead of experience than mine.
And I kind of looked for, can the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? So I think that's important. I think also when you start a company for us in the world of business-to-business software, you really have to be clear about the problem you're solving. Are you really meeting an unmet need?
The way to really understand that and validate is immerse yourself in the problem space and talk to as many potential customers as possible. So often before we'll start a company at High Alpha with a founder, we'll have a hundred plus conversations with potential prospects, just to make sure that we really understand the problem and is there a unique need in the market that we can fit.
So as much validation as you can on the front end, I think is well served. And then at some point you have to kind of jump in and go for it and have confidence in yourself that you're going to be able to adjust course and meet needs, you know, over the arc of time.
Casey Harrison: And I think rely on the community, right? I mean, part of Indianapolis and what makes it so special here is that our entrepreneurial ecosystem is very connected.
Scott Dorsey: 100%. You know, for many of our early stage companies, their first five or ten customers, which are by far the most difficult to bring on board are Indiana-based companies. And there are companies that love our entrepreneurial ecosystem.
They’re really invested in the community and they're willing to take some early risk and be a development partner. And give feedback to that founding team as they're iterating and just knowing going in, the product is not always going to be perfect or meet every imaginable need that you have. But it's a willingness to jump in early and be part of the journey and getting those early validation points mean everything.
It can lead to the first round of funding, can lead to your next wave of five or ten customers. So you need those early proof points and sometimes you have to do unnatural things to build those early proof points and having a supportive community is a huge asset.
Casey Harrison: Yeah. Well and I'd love for you to touch a little bit on failure too, because I think there's often this fear of failure and really that can be the best teacher.
Scott Dorsey: It really can. You know, having within our portfolio, a number of companies that have succeeded, a number that haven't worked out, you probably learn more from the ones that haven't worked out because you really go back and inspect. What went wrong? What could we have done differently? Where was our judgment off or where we did not make the right decision?
So when you're in the world of entrepreneurship, you have to accept that some of your ideas are not going to work and others are going to break out and you just have to learn from every experience you can.
Casey Harrison: So people listening today are digesting all of this in real time. So let's make it a little clearer for them. What are the three things that you would recommend that they take away from this episode?
Scott Dorsey: Okay. Thank you. Boy, that's tough, Casey. I've been thinking a lot about advice for young professionals and I have a number of daughters who are young professionals right now. So it’s very appropriate for kind of my stage of life.
And I work with a lot of young professionals who are in our portfolio and at High Alpha as well. I think probably the first piece of advice would be, optimize for learning early in your career, jump into situations and opportunities and projects where you can learn the most and continue that learning from your undergraduate, maybe graduate degree experience and make sure that you're advancing really rapidly and challenging yourself early in your career. I think that's really important.
I'd say second is look for growth opportunities. You know, really try to think about where the world will be in 3, 5, 10 years. Where different industries will be in 3, 5, 10 years and try to join companies and organizations that have some wind at their back.
Growth is so exciting and growth creates lots of opportunities. So I think that's important. And the third, I would just say is maybe just have a yes orientation. I always think those that take initiative, look for opportunities, push themselves, that that's the period of time where you kind of grow the fastest.
And you know, there might be an event or a project that you're not that excited about jumping into, but I think nine times out of ten, when you do, you're like, okay, that was amazing. I met so many new people. I learned a whole bunch, I expanded my network and I think just kind of pushing yourself to be a yes person and have your eyes and ears and heart open for opportunities is advice that'll serve you well.
Casey Harrison: Oh, I think so too. It reminds me of, I don't know if you're much of a reader, but Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes. And she talks about all the experiences that she gained just from saying yes, and how those opened doors she wouldn't have even sought.
Scott Dorsey: That's so true. I'll have to read that book. That sounds like a great read.
Casey Harrison: I've got a copy for you.
Scott Dorsey: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Casey Harrison: Before we log off today, because time goes so fast, talk to us a little bit about if people listening are wanting to learn more about High Alpha, or maybe they're interested in tech, but they don't really know, to your point, they're not a coder, and they don't know exactly how to plug into the industry. What advice would you give them?
Scott Dorsey: Definitely go to highalpha.com and we have a great careers section and we have a really neat capability on our site that we aggregate all open positions across our portfolio companies. So we have nearly 75 active portfolio companies and all the job opportunities are aggregated and very, very searchable. So you can really explore opportunities there.
If you have a high growth company and you're seeking funding, please let us know. And I would say also, if you have a big idea in the area of cloud computing and you're interested in founding a company, or would like the support of a studio or an amazing resource as well.
Casey Harrison: That’s fantastic. Well, thank you for joining us today, Scott.
Scott Dorsey: My pleasure.
Casey Harrison: We're so glad that you could be here. We're so glad that you were able to join us today to learn about Indiana's advanced industries and how you can start or enhance your career journey. Until next time, we hope that you'll be able to see yourself in the unlimited opportunities right here in Indiana.