The Digital Community for Tech Companies Between the Coasts

What works in Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston often doesn’t work in the Midwest. Or in the Southeast. Or along the Front Range. Resources dwindle and scatter toward the middle of the country. That makes everything different for tech companies between the coasts.

Growing a tech company in the Midwest changes:

• How fast you grow.
• How you raise capital.
• How you recruit talent.

So if you’re a tech professional in, say, the Midwest, how can you access the kind of resource density someone on the coasts can?

We grappled with that same problem growing our own tech companies outside of Silicon Valley. The answer we found is so simple, yet so hard to see.

We needed a network. So we built one.

10,000+ Tech Professionals and Growing

Our community of entrepreneurs, investors, and senior talent represent thousands of tech companies between the coasts. Like us, they’ve all discovered it’s far easier to grow by leaning on each other than going it alone.

Our events help co-founders find each other. Our podcasts, blogs, and newsletters share the lessons members have learned. Check out this webinar where one of our co-founders shares what he learned from botching a $60 million exit. Or listen to this podcast about an Iranian-American entrepreneur who failed his way to founding three unicorns.

A New Way to Recruit Tech Talent

Your tech company is only as strong as the talent you hire. Or more specifically, the talent you attract and keep. That’s only getting harder. The tech talent gap is expected to continue growing. Couple that with tech’s high turnover rate and cost of attrition, you can see how annual recruiting budgets can surpass a seed round.

But there’s an opportunity here, too. Based on data we’ve collected from projects such as the U.S. Tech Census, we know what tech talent wants—and how traditional recruiting models fail to meet those wants.

We’ve developed a new model for finding tech talent. We call it inbounding recruiting, and it matches tech professionals and companies based on variables such as culture fit. Want to learn more?

Why We Do What We Do

Our team knows the pain of launching a tech company in a market that has little infrastructure to support it. It’s hard. If you’re in Silicon Valley, the resources you need are blocks away. But if you’re in Des Moines? It might take you a year of hustling just to close your first funding round.

That resource inequality isn’t just annoying. It’s holding back emerging tech hubs like Cincinnati, Nashville, and Minneapolis, who have shown their ability to do more with less makes them just as deserving of the prosperity concentrated on the coasts.

Our digital community helps tech companies between the coasts find the resources they need to grow much faster. Capital, partnerships, mentorship … whatever you need, you can find it in the Powderkeg community.

Want to be part that community?