Empowerment via Community Learning with Matt Hunckler

Hello everyone! My name is Ladek and my guest for today is Matt Hunckler who is the founder of PowderKeg - the place to plug into tech, outside of Silicon Valley.

In this community conversation Matt and I talk about

00:00 Start

05:00 The origins of PowderKeg through Matt’s own struggles of looking for opportunities in the tech startup space outside of Silicon Valley

07:50 How Matt chose a different path, took a pay cut and jumped on the opportunity to become a part of what is now the PowderKeg network. PS: When is the last time you took a chance to really stretch yourself and grow?

13:00 Leading back to Community, in work and Matt’s life—and how this continues to serve and fuel his vision for supporting others by sharing knowledge that can be applied immediately

24:30 How the first iteration of a community evolved into PowderKeg to provide that critical “density” of resources (i.e. talent, capital, partnerships) every company or organization needs

30:00 The importance of finding our “niche” tribes, where we can truly geek out on our passion, but also making sure we consciously seek out other experiences so that we’re consistently expanding, growing and finding our blind spots

35:00 How PowderKeg is helping to bridge the gap between HigherEd and the “jobs” world, especially in the tech space.

49:00 The maturing of the digital and tech space, and how this is affecting people’s choices for where, how and whom they want to work with

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Transcript

0:03

This is the eLearn Podcast. If you're passionate about the future of learning, you're in the right place. The expert guests on this show provide insights into the latest strategies, practices and technologies for creating killer online learning outcomes. My name is Ladek and I'm your host from Open Elements. The eLearn Podcast is sponsored by eLearn magazine. Your go to resource for all things online learning click by click How to articles the latest in EdTech Spotlight Unsuccessful Outcomes and Trends in the Marketplace. Subscribe today and never miss a post at eLearn magazine dot icon and Open LMS, a company leveraging open source software to deliver a highly effective, customized and engaging learning experience for schools, universities, companies and governments around the world since 2005. Learn more at open LMS dot net. Hello everyone. My name is Ladek. Thanks so much for joining me today for this episode of the eLearn Podcast. My guest for today is Matt Hunckler, who is the founder of Powderkeg, the place to plug into tech outside of Silicon Valley in this really community conversation. Matt and I talk about the origins of powderkeg through Matt's own struggles of looking for opportunities in the tech startup space outside of Silicon Valley, and how Matt made the decision to choose a different path, take a pay cut, and jump on the opportunity to become a part of what is now the Powder Keg Network. And P.S., when's the last time you took a chance to really stretch yourself and grow? I mean, ask yourself that honestly. We also talk about why all things in Matt's life and therefore powder keg lead back to community and how this continues to serve and fuel his vision for supporting others by sharing knowledge that can be applied immediately. We also talk about how the first ever iteration of the community, which was called Verge, evolved into Powder Keg to provide that critical density of resources, things like talent, capital and partnerships, these these resources that every company or organization needs today. We also talk about the importance for all of us in finding our niche tribes, where we can truly geek out in our passion, but also making sure that we consciously seek out other experiences so that we're consistently expanding, growing and finding our blind spots that we need to fill and in order to stretch. We talk about also how powderkeg is helping to bridge the gap between higher ed and the jobs world, especially in the tax base, of course. And then finally, we round out our conversation talking about the maturing of the digital and tax base and how this is affecting people choices for where, how and whom they want to work for. And remember, we recorded this podcast live so that we can interact with you, our listeners, in real time. If you'd like to join the fun every week on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, just come over to E-learning magazine Ecom and subscribe. Now I give you Matt Hagler. How are you? Matt, I think you're on mute. There you are. Talk over you. Super cool. How are you today? Doing great. How are you? I am fantastic. I know. I always ask everybody this, you know, as we kick this off. I know where you are. But. But but tell us. I mean, where are you sitting? I love your office. It's absolutely fine. Thank you. Because it's actually real. It's. It's not something like this. But this is the this is the Home Office, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm coming at you live from the cloud as the entire tech world is these days, working at least in hybrid work environments, mostly remote still. And I think that's, you know, no longer the new normal. It's the normal. Yeah, absolutely. But we've we've got a great team here at Powderkeg and excited to be here. Great. So let's just I mean, let's dove right in because I wanted to you know, I want you to first tell us about Powder Keg. Tell us a little bit, you know, not only the history, but sort of the service you provide. But then let's take it into how we can connect what you do to the e-learning universe. Yeah. Sure thing. So we. A powder keg is the place to plug into tech outside of Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley, for the last several decades has been the epicenter of technology as things have moved more and more remote and virtual and into the cloud. Really, Silicon Valley has had sort of an unbundling, meaning the resources, the access, the connectivity that Silicon Valley had in the eighties and nineties, early 2000, which really gave that community an advantage. And why you saw a lot of amazing innovations coming out of that era and you still see amazing innovations coming out of those areas. But that really has become decentralized, so decentralized in the same way cryptocurrency is decentralizing, finance, decentralized in the same way that e-learning can now be done from anywhere, doesn't necessarily have to be in a physical space or location. And I've been working in this space for the last decade plus really kind of started for me, actually, right out of graduating college. I thought I was going to move from Bloomington, Indiana, where Indiana University is. KELLEY School of Business is where I went to school, and I really thought I had to graduate and move out to the Bay Area, San Francisco, Silicon Valley to keep growing the business. I'd started in college, I thought that's where I, you know, I would need to get capital, get customers, get more talent. And fortunately, I was plugged into a group of entrepreneurs here in Indianapolis where I still live today, and was plugged into an amazing community called Order Fellowship, named after former Governor Bob or. And that community of recent graduates and then classes before me that had graduated. Plus the access to executives. Tech executives for me was compelling enough to actually take a pay cut from what I was paying myself at my business to join a high growth tech company, because for me, the learning was more important than anything else. I want to stop you right there. I want to because I want to talk about that for a second. We live today in a universe that is saturated with ballers and players and bling. And I mean, I know. And this is true story. Yeah, I'm here in Mexico City. Last night, my wife and I went to the Justin Bieber concert here, and I was actually talking with some of my colleagues earlier just saying, you know, like, what's it like to be 28 and never have lived in the reality of anyone? Right. And so, you know, I was in this stadium with 60,000 other people, you know, listening to The Scream, their adult revelations that this guy and yet you are now talking about making that choice to be like, hey, you know what? It's not about the dollars and cents. Talk to me for a second about how you knew that that was a good decision. Like, I'm wondering, how do we talk to people who are in education today, especially learners and lifelong learners, where maybe we look at the happiness equation or the equation of. What's going to get me to where I'm going to be rather than just what's dollars and cents? I think I knew that from a lesson previously. I and learning it the hard way. So I actually did my first year of university at Purdue University. So 2 hours up the road from Bloomington, Indiana. It's actually where I grew up. So had already spent 15 years there. All my professors, my freshman year at Purdue, not all, but a lot of them were like friends or like classmates, parents that I knew. I literally, like nothing. Awkward, did not. Cross the street. My high school was like two blocks from here, you know, the basketball stadium at Purdue. And so for me, I was kind of like thinking that university was going to be this like different environment and this is going to be a new gear for me. And I had already taken a couple of classes at Purdue, my senior year of high school, because it was across the street from us. And that was a very common thing to do. My business professor in high school and was also a business professor at Purdue. So for me I was kind of like, this is it stretching me or growing me in the way I want to do it? And it had nothing to do with the curriculum at Purdue. It had nothing to do because obviously they're a very top ranked school, very prestigious school. It had everything to do with the environment and the people and the community. And kind of what I was looking for and what I was looking for was something that was really going to push me to get a little bit outside my comfort zone. Now, granted, I only went 2 hours down the road, but in comparison to being in the same town and knowing every street and like already knowing all the buildings and already knowing most of the professors too, like knowing nobody. Newtown, never been there before, didn't even visit it because growing up at Purdue Town you learned that IU's far inferior, which is false. But you know, because of that rivalry, I just I had no idea. And the only reason I discovered it is because I was dropping in on some friends classes my freshman year when I went down to, you know, frankly, to party with them, you know, one of them was like, hey, we're going to go to our business class. And, you know, the buddies I had traveled down there with were like, We're going to stay in bed. I was like, Can I come along? And I was I was just loving it so nice. I learned the lesson that, like, it's not all about dollars and cents because I lost all of my scholarships, even though I had a direct in that and IU Kelly from high school once I chose Purdue that was take you know that was. Of course. So you know for me that was tens of thousands of dollars that I was taking on because I had a full ride at Purdue. But for me, it was well worth it to make that jump because one, taking on that debt is what kind of encouraged me and forced me to start a business too. Putting myself in a new environment and a community of people around me. You know, I you Kelly school as number one ranked public school for entrepreneurship, which is what I was passionate about doing. I still am passionate about doing, obviously. And so getting into that community of people who are also starting businesses already running businesses, professors who had exited businesses and and I think some of that existed at Purdue, too. But for me, it was just kind of that combination of all of those things. And so I saw this opportunity to stay in Indiana. Versus go out to the Bay Area as a similar kind of choice. Obviously, the Bay Area has a great community of entrepreneurs. There's lots of technology. But this or fellowship was something that already existed. It was a community of people who had self-identified. It's called the OR Entrepreneurial Fellowship in my area. These are probably my people. And then the direct access to all the executives at the big tech companies at the time, which were ExactTarget, which got acquired by Salesforce, you know, Angie's List, which got acquired by Home Advisor. So really getting kind of a front, front row seat to a lot of that stuff for me. I wouldn't change a thing and I think I think I was open, open to it because it had worked out for me previously. And that's right. And I am not going to I'm going to I'm not going to steal your thunder by telling my story. But I swear, you just like if if I were to just replace Purdue and IU with Colorado College and Colorado State University, you literally just told my and my entire company. That's awesome. I did the literal exact same thing a decade before you did. So sorry. That's that's probably why we we vibe so well so crazy. Hi. I'm jumping into the conversation real quick to ask you a very simple, quick favor. If you are enjoying what you're listening to right now, if it's if it's interesting, if it's entertaining, if you're pulling away value, if you're learning something, whatever the case may be. Do me a favor and just hit subscribe on your podcast player right now. You know, if it's on your phone, if you're listening on a computer, whatever it is, just take 2 seconds right now. Hit subscribe. It helps us. You'll never miss an episode and you know, everybody wins. And if you really like this content, you know a lot. Come on over to Elan magazine. Throw your email address in there and subscribe there as well for other great content around our blog posts. Run the events we play and of course this podcast as well. Thank you very much. And now back to the show. So take me to a powder keg. You know, like what was the genesis of it and what service do you provide? And and especially like what are we how are we connecting to? Both higher education universe, but then also the new professional who's growing their skills and then the lifelong learner like let me throw all three of those questions at you at the same time. Cheryl, you'll learn very quickly that all roads for me lead back to community. It is the thing that just very early in my career, I read a book called Tribes by Seth Godin. Mm hmm. Very small book, which is why I read it. You know, it was like I read it in a, you know, an an hour or two kind of book, but it talks about kind of finding your people. Finding the people that were in for me at the time when I moved to Indianapolis, I was like, Okay, where are my people? Who are the people spending nights and weekends, you know, developing software, starting businesses, building websites, learning about new technology? And there were some things that kind of existed at the time in Indianapolis, but I noticed that the people were very different than me. You know, I wasn't wearing pleated khakis with the tucked in button down shirt or the three piece suit to work. I was working at a startup and I wanted to find that my startup people. And so part of the book Tribes is, you know, if you can't find your tribe, build it. And so that's really what me and a couple couple of friends, that's what we did. We started a community at the time, was called Verge, and the whole thought was just like, Let's get everyone we know, which at the time was like 12 people and get them together. We're going to grab beers, you know, we're going to we're going to go to the bar, but we're going to bring our laptop so we can hook it up to the projector and, you know, the little conference room that are at some types of bars. And we're just going to present what we're working on and ask for feedback. This is before a shark tank, but it was very much Shark Tank without the checkbooks. Sure. Yeah. And it was that was such a cool experience. And I did that one time. And everyone said, When's the next one? And I said, Next one. What? You know, I just want some feedback on my business. This was great feedback. I need to go execute on that, you know. So of course, I was working at a cloud technology company full time, but I'm also starting an e-commerce business on the side, also plugged into these entrepreneurial curriculum at that or fellowship program. And so I was like, I don't have time for this, but there was this need. People kept hitting me up saying, When is the next one? When is the next one? And so we hosted the next one and twice as many people came to that one. And at the time, the technologies that were new were YouTube and Twitter. So I was recording all of the talks. You can still find some of them on YouTube today. I was recording the talks, tweeting uploaded to YouTube and then tweeting them out. And that's how people were finding out about this. Was this new technology called Twitter? I think Twitter was maybe two years old at the time, but that was that was such a cool thing because there are these monthly kind of in-person gatherings. But then the conversation continued over this medium Twitter that was kind of new and everyone was using in between events. Hmm. And over time, what. What ended up happening is, you know, livestreaming started to become a thing, so people from out of town could view the events. Then people in other communities started self hosting their own version events. So, you know, Raleigh, North Carolina had a chapter. Kansas City, Missouri had a chapter. And of course, we provided, you know, some of the materials and lessons learned because we kind of operationalized everything here in Indianapolis. But what started to form was this sort of like regional and eventually sort of national community of people who just wanted to learn. And grow grow in our careers. Mm hmm. And a lot of a lot of us were early in our careers and hungry for this kind of community. But the the key thing was making sure we had successful entrepreneurs who were there that we could learn from. And so there was there was a lot of this kind of community that formed early on where, you know, these entrepreneurs who are maybe a little bit later in their career and looking to give back provided them an outlet to do that. And for these people who are earlier in their career, it provided a way to learn directly from someone who was actually doing it or had actually done it. Right. And and create a relationship. So it wasn't just like, oh, I watched this video, you know, thanks, Suzy, for your advice on how you started your company. It was you know, I watched this talk and now I'm having a conversation to learn more and actually, like engage with the material. And one of the big switches for me when I was going to college was this difference between I call it book knowledge and applied knowledge, and I'm sure I stole that from somebody. But, you know, I'm a voracious reader. My laptop's on a stand of books right now. You can see the books behind me. And so I started playing this game with myself in college. Part of why I started a company beyond paying off the student debt was I wanted a place to apply the knowledge that I was gaining. So I would play this game in class where I'd literally be on my laptop. This is before they didn't allow this, but I would be on my laptop taking notes, but also literally trying to take what I'm learning in this venture capital class and apply it to my own business that I'm working on. Live in that in that class. Who doesn't allow that? Well. So there was a period of time when I was in college where like it was allowed and then it was disallowed because it was like, Oh, you're doing other stuff on your laptop. So now it's kind of commonplace. But I was like early enough. Sure. Like, not everyone had a laptop. There was, you know, most people had a desktop back at their dorm, myself included. So yeah, it was there was like a weird period of time where like it was allowed and then like it got taken away. So now it's probably allowed again. Shows you how much I know about higher education these days. Yeah. Everyone's attending classes on their laptop anyway, so it's exactly quite a bit different. But going back to this community, it was a way to for everyone to get applied knowledge, say, I have this problem I'm working on. I can't seem to figure it out. I've tried these things. What am I doing wrong? Mm hmm. And they're getting different ideas and using a methodology that which was relatively new at the time, called the Lean Startup Methodology, which is very popular in the tech world. It was all of us just kind of building community. And, you know, in the tech world, failure is actually glorified in some ways. You know, fail fast is a phrase that that's used. I'm really grateful for that because I think I have a tendency to be a perfectionist, like at my core, being in the in the tech industry. It's sort of like that has that is trained me out of that because you can not be a perfectionist and be an entrepreneur successfully. That's my thesis anyway. So what we did. At what point did people like from outside the Indiana area? And obviously, you know, you started these chapters and whatnot, but I'm thinking, at what point did people start calling in? EMILY Hey, I'd love to come, you know, give a talk or, you know, I think that there's an opportunity here. Obviously, probably some opportunistic type of things, too, for people to, you know, put their brand on the table or whatever. But like, when did that start happening? And like did you kind of feel that like a switch where rather than reaching out and kind of looking for your next guest, they were coming to you. It was the first one. Oh, man, come on. And that's just benefit of being early. You know, there was no other outlet for this. No one else was doing pitch events. Nowhere else was doing any kind of fireside chat with entrepreneurs except in university classrooms. And you were enrolled to go to those specific classes? Yeah. So we just benefited from being early on and having the right people in the room. It was literally at that first event, you know, people are like, When's the next one? And then the second half of that sentence is because I have something I'd like to share next time. Right. Right. Well, I guess then take me to the next level. Was there ever. Did it get to a point where you know that? Like venture capitalists or, you know, someone with a big idea who are never looking for talent or, you know, somebody who just want to have their egos stroked because they wanted to talk about how they, you know, how they, you know, they a10x their revenue night last week. You know, like at what point did that start happening? Well, that so they didn't always reach out. They still don't always reach out. You know, the the the ones that are in the top 1% of the top 1% of performers, that is I mean, still today, even with our virtual big virtual conferences that we do. Mm hmm. I'm still usually the one reaching out, saying, hey, we've got a community of over 10,000 tech professionals who are who are really doing it. They're really building things. Here's here's the ask 20 minutes. We get to talk about this topic you're really passionate about. Would you like to take up that has that is never changed. When we have, we're always going to find the very best. I do think there was I promise I'm not trying to be difficult in answering your question. I do think there was a time when there was sort of like the tipping point. You know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the tipping point. Sure. Mm hmm. And for us, I think it was around 150 true fans. I think Malcolm Gladwell even talks about that number. I think that's Finbarr Dunbar's number. Once you have those 150 people who they're going to be, they're like, as long as there's not a conflict, they're going to be there and they're going to show up. And even if there's even if they're not going to be they're going to tell other people about it. They're going to support you the other way, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yep. And so I think that was like really the tipping point for us. And it really only took maybe. It was within the first year. Then that point hit and we just kind of had this organic grass roots community. And our first couple of chapters happened because people moved to another city from Indianapolis. Like, I just that's how Raleigh happened. I just moved from Indianapolis to Raleigh. There is nothing like what this was, which is crazy because there's so many great big tech companies here, IBM, Red Hat, you know, now Google and everybody's as in the research triangle. So that's kind of how we sort of cross-pollinated initially, you know, before livestreaming was, you know, commonplace. And, you know, everyone was finding people through, you know, virtually nothing. And now there's a lot more tools. We're on stream yard right now. The answer would streaming to all kinds of different social platforms. There's so many different ways to do comments. Dropping a comment below, asking a question. Polls and you know, none of that existed, you know, even five years ago, at least not as like a commonplace thing. Not not even three years ago. I mean, that's really the the the accelerator of the pandemic, at least in adoption, has been radical. Absolutely radical. So take me to, you know, how you know, I'm not sure a verge evolved into powder keg or a powder keg came out of left field or you recognize that this was a really a need that needed to be filled. So what what was the origin there? So it was one of those things that just kind of organically happened as well. My whole career has been just kind of like listening to what the community wants and building that thing. You know, I did high growth technology companies as a full time job in addition to The Verge from 2009 2013. So those are my first four or five years in a professional setting working full time. 40 hour work week. I'm using it because it was more like 60 plus because I was just there on myself in everything I could, you know, and saying, Yes, I'll do that too. That was my say yes to everything phase of life. And I burned myself out doing that. You know, that was the hustle grind culture of, you know, early start up tech communities. I very much bought into it. I think I benefited from it in a lot of ways. But the downside was you can't sustain that forever. And so after a startup that I was working on was supposed to spinoff from another company, ended up kind of imploding with that company. I just kind of needed to take a step back and Verge had grown into this thing that was basically a lifestyle business. And so after taking a few months to really think about what what to do next, I didn't think it was verge. I was kind of one of those things again where I sort of like next one, what, you know, like, that's okay, that's not what I'm trying to do. But in those couple of months after I left that last venture funded company, I had been invited to speak in a lot of different places. You know, run some workshops, you know, out in San Francisco for the Ebola summit. Very relevant. Now, you know, first thing. I would just say, wow, that's a long time ago. That's all the way out to Auckland, New Zealand, you know, Columbia down in Columbia and Medellin, Aruba, and then just all over the United States. And so in that travel and kind of following just things that kind of popped up and I did that for another five years after 2013, just kind of ran an event once a month in Indianapolis, you know, supported other folks in other communities who are running events in their markets. And it was in traveling to all of those different places, in some cases, like five cities in five days, you know, back to back to back, you know, and each day is action packed. It's like, you know, 7 a.m. meet with the mayor and all the chambers of commerce, 9 a.m., go to the biggest tech companies in the cities and city and do a tour 11 a.m.. Go to the biggest venture capital firm in that city and learn about what's going on there. And it would all culminate in a verge like pitch event at the end of the day. So it was sort of seeing that back to back to back ness. But I started to see a pattern, which is one every tech community. You know, you're in Mexico City very different than Indianapolis. I can guarantee I haven't been to Mexico City yet, but I know some folks that run, run some startup community stuff there, including yourself. Yeah. But while all these communities are very different and have their own strengths and opportunities. We all suffer from the same challenges. And I would summarize all that to density. Density of resources. And it's what Silicon Valley had an advantage on for so many decades is that geographic density? Everyone's right. They're graduating from Stanford. They're sticking around in the Bay Area. All the big tech, you know, big original tech communities are companies that exited. You know, people were spinning off from them and starting other tech companies. All the venture capital is there. And in fact, still today, 75% of all venture capital nationally in the US goes to the Bay Area. Wow. And so this density challenge, density of talent, density of capital, density of customers willing to buy from startups. This is what we set out to help solve at Powderkeg. Starting with the biggest pain point for tech companies, which is still today hiring and retaining the best talent. Hmm. Is that it came about. Thank you. That's fantastic. My is the best talent. Because we see it down here. Okay. We see it in Mexico City for sure. You know, I'm on, you know, an embarrassing number of WhatsApp groups. Right. Because that's how that's how essentially every small community get started, you know? Same in Madison. Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. And at least in Latin America, but actually in many parts of the world. And, you know, you see so often, you know, hey, I've got this is my idea, this is my startup and we're looking for X, Y and Z. But one of the things I've found interesting is that it's often. Marketing folks or operations people or local organizer or, you know, somebody, you know, sort of like a non what you'd call a tech job even though these are all many of them are, you know, tried and true tech startups. These are ecommerce companies. These are, you know, middleware companies. These are, you know, SAS providers, these kinds of things. But they're looking for like the talent gap is there rather than, hey, I need a front end developer or a fullstack developer, a UX UI kind of person, those kinds of things. Does that is that what you've seen in Indiana as well, or is it really that is the opposite true. That's a really good question and astute observation. And actually, I skipped over a part, which is we were originally called hackers and founders. So interesting. Okay. Developers and entrepreneurs. And the whole idea was like, how can we get our technical co-founder and make a space for them? And so that was built into our community very early on. Know even if we're pitching something, you're not pitching only the business idea in the business model, like you have to have at least one minute of your five minute pitch needs to be focused on the technology. What is unique about it, what is defensible about it? What tech stack are you using so that it would be relevant to software developers, DevOps people, you name it, the. The thing that's really interesting and the way communities have grown is. There is a lot of benefit in having niche or niche depending on how you want to pronounce it, communities, you know. So having a, you know, here in Indianapolis, we have indie hackers and DUI and gang. Okay, so Indy like the Indy 500 indie hackers, which is run by someone who started that group around the same time, I started A Verge where people can just geek out and nerd out about that stuff. The more technical aspect of things, I think that's really important to any thriving startup or tech ecosystem is that, you know, whatever your area of focus is and where you're trying to learn, you know, how can you niche down and find the people who are really talking about similar problems that you might have faced previously yourself and you could share from experience on or that you might be facing in the future? Mm hmm. And then it's also helpful to be plugged into broader groups where you might run into someone like Powderkeg. CTO now is the guy who built the original job board on the Internet, which became Monster Jobs or Monster.com. And he just happened to be in the back of the room at one of those bars and learned about it on a platform called Meetup. And so the magic of colliding with people different than you. There's magic in that, too. So that that's been sort of a core belief for me for a long time is I go, you know, I try to go I try to go to events like Startup Ladies as well, even though the name might not lend itself to thinking like, that's where I should be, because one, you know, I know the organizer and I know that's not the intent of the event. But also it's going to have there's a totally different circle of people who are talking about different things that I might not know about, might be blind spots for me. And I think in any career that's true. And Steve Jobs, you know, famously talked about that a ton in how Apple grew and how it grew its competitive advantage. You know, just the focus of design in the apple came from things like dropping in on calligraphy classes, you know, at university that he wasn't paying for and just getting really geeked out about typography, you know, before that. Yeah, it's something. It was just like this eight bit, you know, can't even call it a font. It was just this, like, blue screen or black screen, white type. Quote unquote, typography. Yeah, well, it's it's those it's it seems like such a simple formula and yet such a powerful one that I wonder. How many? You know how many people actively pursue because putting yourselves in those places of. Strangeness. Newness. You know, outside, as you say, your comfort zone, you know, it offers you moments of serendipity, right? Yeah. It's like, wow, I didn't even know that was the thing. And how could I connect X to Y, you know, or gosh, I didn't even know that this, you know, community of people who do exactly what I need, you know, exists, you know, and because it was called tech ladies or whatever, you know, like I didn't even know that was there. It's really, really super fascinating. Here's where my brain is right now. Sure. Share what you just described. You used to be owned. It used to be the property of higher education. Yes, this used to be. You went to university. You went to college. Pre, obviously. Let's just call pre-Internet. Right? Let's let's call, you know, before the dinosaurs. Now I'm just, you know, you went there because this was where you would have your mind blown. This is where you would be exposed to new ideas. But most importantly, you'd be exposed to community, hopefully from around the world, or at least from a large geographical diversity and ethnic diversity. And that's how you would get that that muscle of holy smokes, look at all these other options for my life or my career, for my whatever what you've just described. Exist today. I think we're all very aware of it. It needs no border. It needs no tuition fee. It needs no. I mean, obviously, there's organization and structure, but it's very ephemeral. Right. Like anybody can throw together a WhatsApp group. Anybody can do this, you know? And you know, I think the most interestingly, I'm you know, I'm I'm now thinking of just like TED talks and TED talks and those like these it becomes it has a organic life of its own. The question at the end of this diatribe is. As you are allowed, you know, moving powder cake forward. And you're you've built these communities across your whole career and you've attended them and you've seen that serendipity. Talk to me about what higher Ed has experienced over the last couple of years. Where. Let's just be honest. The existential crisis has happened about where's the value added and. Are you? Are you filling a gap for them with powder keg? Are you. Are you working with them or are you partnering with them? Is that is this even a conversation? Are they even on your radar? I think that's my question. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good observation, too. I had the privilege of going to my brother in law's graduation from UVA University of Virginia last year. And so being on that very historic campus, I think it was founded by Thomas Jefferson, I could be totally wrong about that. But, you. Know, this is old. It's very old. You know, like there there are so many documents in their library. There's so many books in their library that at the time only existed in those libraries. You had to go there if you wanted to learn that material, because literally the book was in that library. And now to your point, Ladek, there is limitless information which I think presents its own problems. Oh, yeah. No, it's a it's a yeah, it's a huge problem on the other side. Right. It's like it's a quest, you know, it's like totally overwhelmed. And that's where I think universities, at least the ones I think that are adapting well to this are are really setting themselves apart, really by curating content, curating material, curating guest lecturers. You know, I was fortunate to go to Kellogg School of Business, which I think still has a number one online MBA program, which it also did pre-pandemic as well. So I've worked very closely with Phil Powell. They're just really one of those people that's thinking, you know, five, ten, 20 years out in the future in higher ed. And one of the things I really appreciate about how he's thinking is he's thinking entrepreneurially. And I'm sure that's a challenging thing to do. Just because of the culture of higher education historically has not been to like be like, hey, this is working. Let's change everything. Mm hmm. Yeah, sure. It's sort of like, hey, this has been working. Why would we change? It tends to be. And it's the same thing at big tech companies, right? Like even big tech companies aren't like, hey, this is working. Let's let's change, let's try something new. They like, this thing's working. How do we increase it by 5 to 10%. Right. Right. Hmm. But it a lot of things are getting disrupted right now. I'm seeing way more people come in to at least powderkeg with no college degree. Mm hmm. And they're. They're joining tech companies that don't require it. Mm hmm. Or they're going to a coding academy and learning to code in a 90 day program. Mm hmm. And coming out of that with a, you know, high five figure job and a career path that can support them, probably for their entire lifetime, just because of the shortage of technical talent that there is right now. That said, I think there there's still a really important place of higher education. One. I personally don't think that virtual can ever 100% replace the learning and relationship connectivity that can happen in an in-person environment. What we we know, I mean, there's been a couple of other people who have been guests on the podcast here who I mean, the science is definitive. I mean, absolutely. And it's really it's really quite interesting about when we think about. Our need as social animals to be in the same space together and what that means to us and how we communicate the connection we have, the energy that we share. I mean, I, we get a little. You know, I feel like a bit existential here as well, but it is a reality that we can test and people have. And the gentleman, his name. I'm totally forgetting right now. He is and he is John Medina. I think I want to say his name is. But, you know, he was just he was describing it on an earlier episode about how you and I know how to interrupt each other or interject each other in a conversation because we can melt our ears, actually. Feel the air pressure difference between us in a room like that. It gets down to that level of stuff. Yeah. All of this is to say. No matter how. How hard we tried to go virtual all the time. There will just absolutely never be a replacement for this virtual intel where intel where we are all digital ourselves. Right. And in that point, I don't know if we all humans evolve. Yeah. Intel, whatever. Centuries or millennia. Right. Right. Exactly. You know, and so I you know, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I take that forward for me. So as you've seen universities evolve, as you've seen this, how have they started to reach out in a different way, maybe to the startup in the corporate community, or have they started to co-opt and maybe do a land grab? Like, I've seen that in some cases where it's like, hey, we're actually no, our brand means this. What what have you seen in that regard? Well, we've definitely done partnerships with universities. So, you know, in Raleigh Durham with with Duke and NC State here in in Indiana with Purdue and Indiana University, obviously had some ends there to make that that possible. But I you know, I think our closest relationship is with the K School of Business and with Phil Powell, because he's forward thinking in that way. And because there's this IUPUI, Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis campus. So that's, you know, Indianapolis kind of halfway between West Lafayette and Bloomington. And I've just noticed that you. Indiana is also kind of stick together. I don't know. Our executive director. Oh, yeah. The managing director. Phil Hill. Sorry. So. Yeah. Woops. Phil Miller. He is very, very much in Indiana. Yeah. Is that what you say? Hoosiers. Hoosiers or either. Doesn't that Hoosiers just love it? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Great movie, by the way. Hoosiers is a great movie. Yeah. I think what Phil is doing to engage, get students from the evening MBA program or the even the online NBA program, you know, getting them free passes to come and attend powderkeg events to network with employers even when they're in school or recent graduates who are at their first full time job to plug in and develop their. So they're social and professional networks, but then also reaching out to entrepreneurs and saying, what are you seeing? What are you looking for? Or heads of talent at tech companies and saying, where are the gaps and what are we not preparing students for today that we should be? And even experimenting with things like just in time courses and certificates where you don't have to do a full enrollment in a four year program or a two year MBA. And it can just be a leadership certificate or an entrepreneurship certificate that you can get in a semester with two or three classes that you're plugged into. So I do think that the universities that can adopt principles like the lean startup methodology that startups have used to innovate for years. I think higher education can and are not everyone, obviously, but the ones that continue to. Rise to the top and are seeing their student body grow year after year are the ones that are trying new things and looking for ways to differentiate themselves. I am by no means an expert in higher education. These are just the things I'm seeing anecdotally. But, you know, seeing that partnership between we've got a coding academy here in town called 1150 Academy, founded by someone I worked with previously, the guy who invented voice mail, also a Hoosier, and he started 1150 Academy. It's a nonprofit coding academy. You can learn cybersecurity, you can learn how to code. You can learn all kinds of the top skills that are in-demand right now for companies. And you can do that in a six, six week program, six month program, you know, depending on what you're you're looking to do. But seeing how Katie School of Business is partnering themselves with those programs to say like, hey, this person is graduating from business but wants more exposure to technical skills. And vice versa. This person is graduating with, you know, a certificate in cybersecurity, but they want to be on the business side of things. You know, now that they have the technical understanding, how do we get them the business understanding where they can accelerate and grow? Mm hmm. And that's just kind of where I'm I'm excited because I do think tech companies. A lot of them are not requiring powder keg included, are not requiring a college degree in order to be employed there. That said, when when employees get to a certain stage in their career. That company might not be set up to provide the training that that employee needs to reach the next level, to go into that leadership position, to go into that management position. There's so many opportunities for universities to work with private companies to identify and doesn't have to be private. I'm just talking about the tech space, but you know, that could be in the public sector, that could be in the government sector, understanding where are the gaps and how could we provide continuing education so that learning isn't the thing that happens in just this four year period after high school? But is the thing that continues through your career and is continuing to plug you in. I think the other piece of that is just community. You know, I told you all. All roads lead back to community. The more that university is, kind of call that out and actually have ways to network with other alumni, other students, other professors, former professors, guest lecturers, those are the ones that are going to continue to rise to the top. Our IU network has been instrumental in helping us get early customers, investors even, and ultimately for me to grow my career. But also everyone that's, you know, works at Powderkeg to grow in their careers. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there as well. At least that's what I'm seeing on the ground here. I have two more questions. I know we're coming to the top of the hour. And so I know your time is precious. The first, the last and the second one is want to ask everybody that was saying, but I want to end sort of the knowledge search of this conversation with this. I'm a part of many of these communities, as we talked. One of them is a fairly large digital marketing community. And one of the very interesting things that I've noticed or that I've seen happen within this community, I'm interested to see this is happening in powder keg as well, is that I mean, people know I've got three kids, I've got a wife, I have three kids. Really. I'm on the older end of the tech universe. Right. The the digital universe. But what's happening in these communities is that many people are coming of age. They're finding partners or they are choosing to have male create families. You know, the I move every six weeks and I'm a digital nomad lifestyle or I can work from anywhere. Like, all of that is sort of the reality of what we might call normalcy is settling in for many of them. Along with that comes. Expectations for when and how I work. Expectations for what my team needs to look like. You know, as you were just saying, sort of expectations. Like rather like, you know, we move from risk taking to stability, making, you know, kind of choices. Talk to me about that for a second about what you're seeing in powder keg, because now digital and tech is has been around long enough, right. 30, 40 years where there's a maturity to it and there's that we always hear about that fresh start up, you know, dynamic, blah, blah. But then there's this huge glut of people who are like, you know, I want to be a part of it, but I got to pay the bills every week. I got a mortgage, you know, I like. And you know what? Frankly, I don't want to move. They talk to me about. I mean, obviously, you didn't you want to stay in Indiana, like talk to me about that. Well, what's great right now is that people have options, and I think that's going to continue to be the case. The challenge is similar to the curation challenge of like now there's all this information, how do I know which stuff is the good information? There's so many different companies. There are so many different company cultures, there's so many different leaders, there's so many different products. And it's it is hard to stay on top of it. I tried to, but I don't even stay on top of 10% to try. You know, a lot of what our community is built around is helping people curate. We've built this software that helps people kind of curate what they care about, starting with, you know, companies. Every company has a profile that outlines their culture, it aligns their product, it has their benefits and work flexibility preferences in there, all of which are Mashable attributes, meaning someone can say, I'm looking for this type of company. And then Powderkeg serves it up out of its database of thousands of tech companies around the country. To that person to say, there you go. If you'd like to ask for an intro, you can request an intro. If you just want to follow them passively and, you know, keep tabs on what you're doing, you can do that on the platform. But I think these are the types of tools that are going to continue to help people and companies stay on top of what's going on because there's so much information out there right now. And another piece of of what we are doing is curating. So if you are interested in a new city or a new industry like fintech or health care tech, we have those resources on the platform to all of which are contributed to by the community and curated by the community so that people can learn more about it and discover these collections of companies that are top ranked across different factors or in different industries or in different geographies. And so having these resources and certainly not the only one that's doing this, we are just laser focused on anyone who is interested in the innovation and tech economy, which I would argue is the entire economy. But but if you're interested in it, in that kind of thing, like there are all kinds of resources there, including just a weekly newsletter to stay on top of which companies are getting funded, which companies are getting acquired, what are people doing the level up in their career and what kinds of jobs are available out there? Plugging into a few communities like this can be extremely helpful, and what we're really trying to do is be that one community, that's the generalist community. You could meet another person like yourself, but you also might meet someone in an adjacent industry or an adjacent function of the business, but then also provide connectivity to these other communities. Like if you want to go deep on software development in fintech, we can connect you to that organization that does that thing. Or if you're really interested in Mexico City, we can connect you with Ladek because he can probably get you plugged in. So really finding ways to create that connectivity in a way that's all supported by software and supported by a community of people who care. Fantastic. Final question then for you is what are you personally, Matt Hungerford, most excited about for the near to near near near term? Six months, 12 months. What are you looking at there like? And it could be something a powder keg could be a shiny new object, could be a startup, could be a new tech that you're using. Could be. A new puppy that you're getting next week? I don't know. What? What are you most excited about? I think I'm most excited about right now. Certainly there is fear, uncertainty and doubt about the public markets right now, at least in the U.S., you know, tech companies are at least public tech companies are getting a haircut right now in terms of valuation. Mm hmm. But I think that particularly companies outside of the Bay Area that that are a little bit insulated by a lot of the hype that's been happening the last 2 to 3 years. Hype meaning, you know, increased valuations, new businesses being launched that don't necessarily have a path to revenue or a solid business model. I, I hope those companies pivot and find a way to succeed in this new world where shifting into right now, where you need those things. But I'm also excited for the companies that are outside of the the Bay Area and the people that work at those companies or the people that could work at those companies. Because I think really we call it the unveiling. You know, I mentioned earlier the unbundling of Silicon Valley, but also this area outside of the Bay Area, which all has connectivity back to the Bay Area. I think there's just going to be this moment of opportunity and we've been having it the last couple of years, too, as everything's gone remote. I think it's going to extend even more in these coming years. And I think what that's going to do is provide more opportunity for more people to plug in. Learn about tech. Build amazing networks, build amazing careers that support really rich lives and have a high quality of life because they get to live where they want to live. And just seeing more of that. Seeing more of those stories as these big shifts are happening all around us, which certainly has its downsides, too. You know, my portfolio is certainly down, as are most people who have, you know, an index fund. But the pro is I think it's creating all of this opportunity for for so many more people. Fantastic. Matt Engler, you are the CEO of Powder Keg. I you know, I'm this has been a fantastic conversation. I love it. And I just can't wish you all the best. You know, I think that's going be wonderful. I want to remind me, though, I think that you have an event coming up or did it just pass? We just passed it. We just passed it on it. But we've got another one coming up. So I that's that's the nice thing about powder keg. We've always got another event coming up. And if you want to sign up for our free newsletter and free software tools, it's just powder keg that com powder keg, all one word. And we have got to get you on the virtual stage a lot because I think all the things that you and your community are doing to help plug people into the latest trends in e-learning are so important. And learning to me is is one of my top three core values, you know, lifelong, lifelong learning. And what you're doing for the industry to help more people do that is really important. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you for the conversation today. And we will talk to you talking and. Thanks a lot. Thanks again for joining me for the eLearn Podcast. Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. Just just push. Subscribe on your player right now. And remember, you can join the conversation live on YouTube, Facebook and my LinkedIn feed every week. I hope to see you there. Thanks.