Fast Break: Emerging Ecosystems: Crafting Tomorrow’s Superstar Cities

Welcome to the Fast Break. Today, we’re tackling the topic that has been at the top of a lot of news stories lately, especially here in Wisconsin, where we have been named the tech hub by the US government, namely how tech startups are changing the world. Did you know that according to pitch book in the first half of 2023 alone, venture capitalists invested a record-breaking 330 billion globally into tech startups. That’s a staggering amount of money fueling innovation across every imaginable industry.

But it’s not just about the cash. Tech startups are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us. From revolutionizing healthcare, to streamlining education and even transforming the way we shop, these young companies are pushing boundaries and making a real difference

To help us dive deeper into this subject, I’m joined today by two experts. First of all, Kevin Little from the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, who is Vice President there. And Vouch, Insurance Co-Founder and Chief Risk Officer Travis Hedge. Kevin, before we dive into some of our questions today, hoping you can tell the audience a little bit about your background.

01:12 Kevin Little

Yeah. Hi, Matt, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation as you mentioned, the Vice President of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and my role here. It’s in my career to this point has really been at the intersection of politics, political advocacy, economic development and communications.

I’m a proud University of Iowa alum. As we were talking about earlier. So if you want to veer off from the conversation to talk about Caitlin Clark’s Rookie of the Year campaign, I’m ready for it.

01:40 Matt Cranney

We’ll see. We’ll see where our conversation goes today. OK. Travis, would you mind doing the same for our audience?

01:46 Travis Hedge

Hey, thanks for having Matt. Excited to get into this. So, I’m Travis, one of the co-founders of Vouch. And grew up in Columbus, Ohio. So I am a Buckeye, which I know doesn’t do any favors in Wisconsin, but I’ve been pushed to spend a bunch of time, really, throughout Wisconsin, and a big fan.

So, Vouch we’re an insurance company for the technology industry, so this is all we do and you know, personally, I joke I’ve kind of spent time in all of the lowest customer satisfaction industry so started my career in in politics, tried to build a bipartisan political platform for young people. Spent some time in banking and insurance, and you know decided to really try to redesign insurance from the ground up for innovative companies. Make it easier or make sure that coverage is actually there when folks need it. And so yeah, just very passionate about the Midwest and growing the mixture ecosystem throughout the Midwest. And I think really being that connectivity through, you know where I live today in Silicon Valley to all the great entrepreneurs and people building businesses throughout the country.

02:41Matt Cranney

I am so thrilled to have you both. I think this conversation is overdue and I think it’s going to be really wonderful, wonderful conversation. So Kevin, Travis, thank you for joining us.

 So let’s just jump right in. From our perspective, can you speak to what role you play in helping tech startups grow and be successful?

03:02 Kevin Little

Yeah, sure. Happy to do so. We’re a regional business organization. So we have about 1200 members throughout the Greater Madison area. Very diverse membership, all different types of sizes, industries, sole proprietors up to some of the largest employers in the region. But our reason for existence is about coordinated action. So it’s really about solving the challenges that that are bigger than any one business, but that affect all businesses.

And so when you think about how startups come into play, you know, from historical standpoint, we know the value that startups have in, in net new job creation and specifically when you’re talking about advanced industry startups like in technology, you know we know Brookings tells us that for every 2.2 jobs that are created, an additional or every one of those jobs created additional 2.2 jobs are created elsewhere, so it’s about generating more community wealth, so we are very much focused on helping support these advanced industries grow in our region as a chamber, you know, at our core we’re a connector.

So we’re always looking for ways to enhance that connectivity with potential customers, advisors, investors. As I mentioned earlier, we are an advocacy organization. So certainly thinking through ways that that government can help support build really robust entrepreneurial ecosystems and then finally helping reach investors and key investment hubs along the coast. How we can enhance our brand awareness and let folks know especially where all of that capital resides about the opportunities that exist here so that companies can continue to innovate and grow, and hopefully build billion dollar companies right here in Greater Madison.

04:30 Matt Cranney

Awesome. So Travis, you know, Kevin talked about being a connector. I see Vouch a little bit of the same way, but you’re connecting companies to the right insurance products they need in the right phase of their growth, so can you talk a little bit more about that?

04:51 Travis Hedge

Yeah, we started the company to fundamentally solve two problems. The thing one is any kind of business or building, whether it be the kind of Main Street SMB businesses wrap around or the tech and life science companies served today. Time is your most valuable resource, and so you know, we got a lot of feedback around how time intensive and high friction the insurance process can be. But frankly, there’s a lot of folks trying to make that better, right. The other really core idea we set out to solve for though and what makes Vouch unique is creating the coverage is actually there for these emerging risks.

And you know, I like to think about the role insurance has played over the last several 100 years and our economic and technological progress. So let’s use an example like steam engine, right, created two fundamentally two kinds of risk thing, one was the steam engine locomotive. You can imagine a lot of bodily injury, right? A lot of lot of opportunity for pretty pure risk there. The other thing it did was it allowed people to travel from town to town under an assumed identity and that’s where the term snake oil salesman.

And so fundamentally, I think innovation risk boils down to how do you identify the new pure risks that are created. So when we create new coverages for AI risk in crypto and fintech and digital health, that’s what we’re solving for. But we’re also fundamentally making sure that, you know, I remember when last time I was in Wisconsin, I was up at Lake Minocqua and my family friends were like, hey, have you heard this book? Bad blood, like, is that what you do?

Well, no, that is actually what we underwrite against and and fundamentally like any new innovation creates these opportunities more broad and bad behavior out and you know our job is to underwrite to set risk as well.

06:22 Matt Cranney

Yeah. No, I love that. And actually my next question starts to build on that a little bit and you know on the fast break we like to talk a lot about playing offense and defense and you know growth and protection with people’s insurance programs.

And it’s obviously clear right now that we’re in a period of either sustained, like sustained offense for small businesses and a lot of tech startups. So I’m curious to get your take on why you think it is right now and obviously the main headline, Kevin, we talking here in Wisconsin is you know the tech hub designation by the federal government. But I think it’s  so much deeper than that. So both of you have really interesting perspectives on why this is a great time to be a tech startup.

7:09 Kevin Little

Yeah, I’m gonna anxiously await Travis’s thoughts from the Bay on this as well, because I’m gonna hedge a little bit. Matt, I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it’s a little bit still of offense and defense. You know, you mentioned some of the staggering fundraising totals from the years since the pandemic hit and they were record-breaking. Yet, you know, over the last 12 months. And I don’t think this is unique to Wisconsin. I think we’re seeing it across the country that capital just dried up a little bit and the types of deals that are being funded have changed.

So in some ways, depending on the type of startup that have there is a challenging environment, but at the at other times where I’m really bullish is you think about some of the opportunities. So Travis just mentioned a couple of them in AI and digital health and fintech and energy infusion. There’s some really big opportunities that exist to solve some global challenges that were just on the horizon of tapping into that are going to affect all industries. And so I do think there’s an opportunity to, to be bullish and new opportunities that are going to exist for new companies to solve problems that again, affect beyond just technology. So I think that it’s a really interesting time to be a founder in that space.

8:15 Travis Hedge

I think that’s really well put. I agree with a lot of that, Kevin, to maybe tie it back to a couple other examples. When I first started at Nationwide insurance back in the day, one of the first things I got to work on was the case for the Chief Investment Officer there about why they should allocate part of their balance sheet in venture capital for the first time in 10 to 15 years at the time. And we looked back at the historical cycles, how that asset correlated two key takeaways there.

One, venture capital is actually the beneath the top–so the top quartile of venture capitals and asset class outperforms every other asset class. Everything below that underperforms every other asset class. So there’s a real concentration in the highest performing investors and companies, right. It lives by a power law versus a lot of other businesses and asset classes have a more normal distribution. That’s related to the cyclicality which venture capital has affected more volatility than basically any other asset class as well. And so you go back to these timings in the in the cycle, right, you had 2000, you had really the next big bubble, if you will, was around 2020-2021. However, people were calling venture capital bubble all the way back to 2011 and you actually look at the Google trends around this. Every time there was a big acquisition, you know Skype and Microsoft or Facebook’s IPO runs like, oh, is there another tech bubble like, no, it actually didn’t come in until 2020.

But this is where, you know, I think you Fast forward to later 2022 as that started to deflate, right. And now all of a sudden a lot of founders who are just playing like, I’ll use the kind of football now to here just ‘chucking mail Marys’ all day, right, like trying to just score at all costs playing offense. Then you saw a bunch of companies also go, sorry Kevin, but like full on Iowa defense only, you know mode here. But they do you run a dangerous risk of overcutting.

At the end of the day, we’re here to grow businesses, right? And so I think the best founders that I see are pretty pragmatic about it. And no matter how much capital you raise recognizing like you are here to build a profitable, enduring business. You know, I think focusing frankly on building stuff that people want. So what is it that the customer needs? And then how do you do that as efficiently as possible? That’s a formula that kind of plays, you know, acoss cycles.

10:24 Matt Cranney

So you know coming to the point of if the purpose of the tech startup or any startup isn’t defined meaningful impactful, the money, it does matter, but it probably doesn’t really because your purpose needs to be able to run longer than your funds, because that ultimately will be what enables your sustainability, is that right, do you think?

10:50 Travis Hedge

Yeah, absolutely. Look at every any investor you talked to, they’re not here at least every investor that I’m familiar with. But they’re not here for the quick win. right here to say, hey, let’s flip this business around in three or four years. Every founder when they’re fundraising needs to be talking about. Yeah, I’m here to build an enduring company that will be public in 10 to 15 years and here for a long time to come, and if you get acquired a long the way, great. But I think that’s you have to have that long term perspective in mind, even before you have product market fit like that that has to be the goal.

11:20 Matt Cranney

Yeah, Kevin, you know, I mentioned a couple of times that you know the federal governments naming Wisconsin as a tech hub. I feel like there’s a lot of chatter around this topic. There’s a lot of headline stories, but I’m hoping in the next, you know, 90 seconds to a couple of minutes if that’s if that’s reasonable for you to be able to give our audience, what does that really mean? What does it mean to the, you know, the average person on the street? Why is it important? Does it matter how it matters? Because I know our audience would be curious about that.

11:52 Kevin Little

Yeah, and I’ll do my best in the in the in the time there. But no guarantees unless you cut me off. Matt. It’s a huge opportunity. And this started with research from just about a decade ago. I mentioned Brookings earlier. They’re also kind of the chief authors of this idea. And it’s stemmed from that advanced industry research. And what they discovered is that when they looked at specific industries that are really heavily R&D focused.

That have that multiplier effect, they found that between 2005 and 2017, 90% of all of those innovation sector jobs, those net jobs that were created in the United States happened in just five metros and they’re all along the coasts. So what they were showing at the same time, a lot of the things you think about more traditional industries, if some place gets more expensive, perhaps to operate and do business, what you might consider relocating to an area where there might be fewer regulations, lower taxes, you know, lower cost.

Well, it’s just not the case in these advanced industries. There is a reason that, yeah, we don’t mind how expensive this area is located. We need this specific ecosystem for our business to be successful, so to using that thinking what Brookings was saying is hey, this is great– It’s not about Boston versus San Diego versus San Jose versus Seattle. This is about our United States innovation economy and how we’re actually losing our competitive edge relative to other countries that are making such bigger investments in basic and applied research.

And so knowing that we need very specific ecosystems, there was a very interesting concept that they created. Which was, this is not for everybody. This is not economic gardening, but where are there places? Where are these specific ecosystems that have the right ingredients in place for us to develop kind of the next superstar cities that can help our nations innovation, economy and they are off of the coast. And so this lingered for several years through a number of different policy proposals before it was approved as part of a much larger science and chips Act. And a lot of that attention was on silicon chips, but this regional technology helps program was a part of it and you saw regions across the country that were competing for this opportunity and these dollars and fortunately in Wisconsin, we were able to successfully receive planning funds and a first designation as a tech hub.

And what made it really great is that it’s specifically focused on an industry strength that’s very authentic to who we are in Wisconsin and what we do well. And that’s around innovation in healthcare and specifically personalized medicine. And there’s genomics and manufacturing. All of these pieces coming together to solve a big challenge in healthcare.

Now to answer your question of of why it matters and what what’s the big opportunity is, this isn’t an investment of some seed money and just see where it takes it, the expectation that comes with these federal funds is that you are going to be a global leader in this space in the next 10 years. So this is all happening immediately around this, this space and for each region that has their own specific investment thesis and the big opportunity that exists within that is–well, the program currently was appropriated right now for $500 million that were spread around that dozen or so technology hubs. It’s actually authorized to be $10 billion.

So if you think about what happens if we are able to pour with very intentional focus on these regional consortiums across the country, billions of dollars.I think that not only is it going to have a huge effect on all of our economies and on a local level, but our nation’s innovation, competitiveness as well. I think it’s gonna have a really profound impact if we do this well.

15:30 Matt Cranney

You did that awesome. Kevin, I think you hit your time marks and everything which is incredible given the complexity of the of the topic, Travis. Anything you wanted to add to?

15:41 Travis Hedge

I’ll try to keep this short cause this is a topic I’m incredibly passionate about, and Kevin  I’m really glad to hear just how you think about this because I prior to Vouch I was very fortunate to spend a few years at in in venture capital. One of my responsibilities is actually going to a lot of these other regions and either raising capital or kind of leading these roadshows. And there was one very consistent theme that just like stood out to me that I very passionately believe in which is let’s go back to that idea of how concentrated returns are in this.

Talent density really matters, and I think the when I went to cities, you know, like Copenhagen or Tel Aviv or London, the most successful markets were the ones are really clear about this is what we do well. This is where we are world class and we’re going to really plant our flag versus I would go to other markets, some that I’m very you know familiar with, including my hometown of Columbus, where I would talk to folks that would say, you know, we’re gonna build it all ourselves here.

We don’t need people to come from the coast and give us the capital. We’re gonna build it here, and we’re gonna build social media apps and enterprise software, and we’re gonna build the next Silicon Valley. No, that’s not going to work.

And so I think, you know, saying, yeah, Wisconsin is great at, you know, the genomics, the biomedical engineering. And we’re gonna build a real center of excellence around that and then build that talent and capital connectivity to these other hubs. To me, that’s the winning formula. And look, innovation is everywhere but talent and capital are concentrated and you have to you have to bring that together.

17:08 Matt Cranney

Innovation is everywhere, but talent and capital are located in specific place. I love that and I think that’s a great thought for us as we continue to move through kind of the rest of our conversations so. Travis, I’m now gonna come to you.

So at M3, we believe the future of insurance and you know, our phrase has always been “Advisor led, Tech Supported”. And to help us live up to that promise, we’ve actually begun an exclusive partnership with  Vuch to be our partner for all tech startups and their insurance needs. Trevor, can you tell us about how Vouch’s innovative approach to insurance and how tech is playing a key role in your business model and maybe why you’re excited for the partnership with M3.

17:50 Travis Hedge

Yeah. Look, I couldn’t be more excited about this. You know, part of the reason we were able to partner together is we know that there are excellent brokers and markets throughout the country that no tech can do a great job with it. So we wanted to build a network of who is the go to expert in every local market and M3 very clearly is that is that partner and so.

For Vouch, the role the technology plays for us. I’ll tell a quick story about that that led to vouch when I was at Nationwide, there were two kind of urban legends. One was, there was a board that apparently in the late 90s that called the Internet a fad. And so they said, oh, we’re not, we’re not going to invest in, you know, heavily in this. There’s also this, this thing where they run a survey every year that said, hey, 50% of people want to have a human agent no matter what. So I say, well, if they are wrong about the Internet thing, they might be wrong about that too.

 And so we started to Vouch for, like, hey, you know, I think if anybody’s gonna wanna just use a digital product here, it’ll be the tech startups that we with. Turns out, no matter what we do within the product, about 50% of our clients want to talk to a human.

I do think you can take a lot of that expertise and inject it into the digital experience. Right. So that for sure, everybody gets more leverage and more efficiency out of the process. But at the end of the day, like insurance is a trust based business. People want to work with people they trust, and so for us, I very much am aligned with how you guys think about this that you know the technology provides the leverage to allow our insurance advisors or M3’s insurance advisors to go from working with 10 great companies a day to 100 great companies a day, right?

We do this in a couple ways. One, is being very data-driven in everything we do. So to give you an example, we just launched earlier this year, the first of its kind AI insurance product that that explicitly covered risks like bias and discrimination and models and errors in your models etc. We were able to do that because we already had a book of several 100 AI clients that we worked with over the years. Yeah, we saw where our funnel went from 10% AI companies to 30% to now it’s like 80% of companies are doing AI in some form.

We’re able to go talk directly to them, understand the risks and needs, identify this gap and launch a product to cover those needs in less than three months. And so that’s where technology can play a role in product development, which I think is a much bigger opportunity than, hey, where can we find some marginal efficiencies along the way to make servicing more efficient effective, which we’re doing as well. Right we’re having A I do a first pass that’s and we’re underwriting classifications and some of our chat based servicing interactions and stuff like that.

But again, insurance at the end of day is about trust. People play a huge role in that and you know this technology is all there to just make us all more efficient, more effective and hopefully broaden the pool of risks that insurance can actually be relevant, right. If you bring the cost of insurance down, you know, maybe that that old heuristic of 30% of business risk is insurable, might go up and we can we can, you know, play a more important role in helping society kind of de-risk innovation.

20:43 Matt Cranney

One of the things I think that makes us, on the M3 side, so excited is when you think about you mentioned it before, Travis. You know the one thing that you can’t get more of as a founder is time. Or any of us can get more of time. But we especially think that’s true in that sort of tech startup community.

And so our partnership with Vouch is going to allow us to serve at the highest level our founder community, our small and growing business community in the most honoring way we can be, which is to be respectful and honorable of their time. So that they we can focus, you know, we use the phrase all the time. Our CEO’s are not chief executive officers only they’re chief everything officers, right and so.

21:25 Travis Hedge

We literally had a billboard with that phrase in San Francisco on point, yeah.

21:29 Matt Cranney

I promise you. I promise you, I didn’t steal it. I promise. If your attorneys.

21:32 Travis Hedge

And it just goes to show how aligned we are, I love it.

21:35 Matt Cranney

No, that’s that. That’s great. And I think this is something that our audience is going to see a lot more from M3 and Vouch about our partnership in the coming days and weeks, but we think this will allow us to show up in a really meaningful way together to serve this Community that, as Kevin has talked about, is set to, we think continue to grow and thrive here in Wisconsin. So thank you for sharing.

OK. So to close out our conversation today, I’m hoping that we can move towards maybe a specific section of our audience. So someone’s listening to this podcast and they’re, you know, in the non-tech startup small business community and Kevin, I know you serve so many of those kind of businesses. So if I’m listening to the podcast today and I’m in that space, can you share why you believe the growth and the rise in prominence of the tech startup environment is healthy for everybody?

22:24 Kevin Little

It goes back to that 2.2 figure. So for if we create every one of these jobs creates additional 2.2 jobs elsewhere, it’s that multiplier effect. It’s not necessarily going to mean that these advanced industries have the most jobs in our economy. It’s not going to be the case, but it does mean that it’s going to have a greater impact on building more community wealth. And that’s really what economic development strategy is all about.

It’s about how can we recirculate dollars like we import dollars. We circulate them as many times in our economy as possible, for they leave that area and I think that’s what it allows us to do. Now, it doesn’t come without challenges. We know that tech can empower just as much as it can divide, but the cities, the regions that that get this right are the ones that are gonna see the most community benefit.

23:05 Matt Cranney

Travis, what’s your perspective on that?

23:08 Travis Hedge

Yeah, I was really well put. I grew up around small businesses. My dad, not a day would go by or he would remind me that I didn’t grow up under floors like he did because he was able to start a small business in Ohio, right.

And so I think about a couple things. One, it was actually a cyber-attack on his business that got my wheels turning about what would become Vouch. He does payroll and benefits for small businesses in Ohio and you can imagine the risk vulnerability of a of a high money movement business, right? They’re a small business. They’ve got, they have one IT guy doing laptops. I think small businesses today have a lot of the same risk exposures as Fortune 500 companies with a fraction of the resources to deal with. Now this is where I think technology comes into play and this is I’m just this is one of many examples where, because the barriers to entry to technology are going down and down. Now you have, you know, world class products that you can bring to an SMB market. Whereas 10-15 years ago the costs were so high to launch and deliver those products that you could really only go after large enterprises.

But I think that’s true from insurance, payments, your point of sale systems at you know restaurants. My aunt had a brewery in Wisconsin, right? And I I remember talking to her a lot about this stuff. And so I think that’s really exciting. I think, you know, entrepreneurship is in small business our the growth engine in this country and the more we can do to empower them, the better and you know tech can play a small and hopefully helpful role in that.

24:32 Matt Cranney

What a hopeful and optimistic note to sort of end this part of our conversation on so. Thank you both for everything you’ve shared. It’s been an awesome conversation. As always, our last set of questions is our fastest break set and I’ll do this round-robin and we’ll just looking for a quick answer off the top does that sound okay?

OK, perfect. Alright, Kevin, I’m gonna come to you first. Favorite book that you’ve read in the last 12 months.

24:58 Kevin Little

12 months not sucking up to Matt Cranny, but I read the Splendid and the Vile, which is an account of Churchill and his closest advisors during World War 2 and the bombings of London is pretty good. Love it, love it.

25:08 Matt Cranney

Love it, love it.Travis, what about you?

25:11 Travis Hedge

I almost picked another Eric Watson book. Love that I I’ll go with, though a book about Teddy Roosevelt called a Strenuous Life. Had my first son recently, there was a lot of good lessons to learn there.

25:21 Matt Cranney

Kevin. Complete the sentence for you. Leadership is.

25:24 Kevin Little

Leadership is about being able to bring the best out of others to accomplish a greater collective goal.

25:31 Matt Cranney

Love that. Travis, what about you?

25:34 Travis Hedge

One of my favorite lines about leadership is it’s about making yourself replaceable. Building the machine, great leaders that can, they can go take it to the next level.

25:41 Matt Cranney

I love it, Kevin, the most impactful coaching advice you’ve ever received.

25:46 Kevin Little

So I’m guessing you mean business, but my you say coaching, I go to growing up playing soccer and it still sticks with me today. And that is don’t get mad. Don’t get even. Score goals.

25:56 Matt Cranney

Yeah. And maybe we can do a whole separate podcast and how that translates to to business. So I love it, Travis, what about yours?

26:05 Travis Hedge

I’m the similar one, actually. My sport was was golf and it’s you gotta move on to the next shot.

26:10 Matt Cranney

Maybe that will be the first offshoot podcast. The Fast Break is translating sport quotes into inspirational leadership advice. So I love it.

26:18 Travis Hedge

We’ll do it at Sand Valley.

26:17 Matt Cranney

I was going to say there we go. There we go. Kevin, your favorite podcast that you would recommend to our audience.

26:23 Kevin Little

If you like to laugh like movies The Rewatchable is is a good one.

26:28  

Love it. Love it, Travis, what about you?

26:29 Travis Hedge

Acquired proud, proud best Vouch client, and partner and just the best three hour business deep dives.

26:35 Kevin Little

It is good love, it is really.

26:37 Matt Cranney

Good. Love it. OK, Kevin, your can’t live without it app on your phone.

26:40 Kevin Little

Boring answer, but just photos. All my photos are there. I got I’ve got to have that.

26:46 Matt Cranney

Nope, they listen. I keep saying this  every time we have guests on here. Travis is gonna set you up, so you’re probably gonna say something cool and awesome, but everybody sort of talks about, like, maps, photos, you know? Text it. Travis. What’s yours?

26:57 Travis Hedge

It’s funny, I have a 1 1/2 year old home, so my answer was going to be photos but I spend way too much time on e-mail and slack, so that’s less, that’s probably less funny answer.

27:15 Matt Cranney

No, that’s awesome. OK, Kevin, last thing you did that truly scared you.

27:23 Kevin Little

That truly scared me. Open seas snorkeling. I saw jaws at too young of an age.

27:30 Matt Cranney

Oh man, that is scary. OK, Travis, what about you?

27:34 Travis Hedge

I hate to keep going back to the well on this one, but I thought my son was choking the other day. Yep. And I realized, like, I didn’t really know how to handle it. So, like, good, you know, good advertisement for risk prevention and being prepared.

27:46 Matt Cranney

Absolutely. And let me tell you as someone who has a 15 year old now and and a couple others that that never goes away. It’s just the choking turns into other things as well. So that feeling of weirdness, unfortunately, never leaves.

27:59 Travis Hedge

I’m just hoping we see what we like we see more progress in driverless cars and I don’t have to worry about.

28:03 Matt Cranney

We could do a whole podcast on in the UK where I grew up. You have to be 17 before you can even start to drive. The fact that we put 15 year olds behind the wheel is crazy to me, so we’ll more conversation about that another time. OK, last one, Kevin, if you have to give a Ted talk, what would be the title?

28:22 Kevin Little

Alright. What do you think of this? “Not Organic: Why things don’t just happen.”

28:29 Matt Cranney

OK, it sounds like a Malcolm Gladwell book ohh. I like that.

28:34 Travis Hedge

I would say, oh, man, “Koolaid Man Energy and Why You Need to Bring Ideas to Life”

28:39 Matt Cranney

Two Ted talks that I would definitely, definitely tune into. So OK, first of all, as we close out today, Kevin, I’m gonna come to you if people would like to know more about how the Chamber here in Madison is playing an active role and being that connector and helping our state grow in so many ways. What’s the best way for people to contact you?

28:59 Kevin Little

Yeah. Please do connect with me. You can find all my contact information on the Chamber website its madisonbiz.com. Also connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to love to connect.

29:09 Matt Cranney

Travis if people want to connect with you or learn more about vouch and the amazing work you’re doing there, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?

29:18 Travis Hedge

Yeah, I’ve always said the Vouch.us or even better Vouch.us/M3, and you can reach me at travis.hedge@vouch.us  anytime, find me on LinkedIn or on Twitter @the_hedgefund

29:33 Matt Cranney

OK. Travis, Kevin, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. For sharing your insights and wisdom with our audience. This was a really, really fun and informative conversation. We really appreciate you guys.