A Sign of Changing Times?

This last year has just been a whirlwind of excitement for both TGFI and myself personally. With everything that is going on to make the internet a more productive place, I feel a renewed inspiration to build products and tools that help others succeed. It’s that same energy I had when I first started creating websites in the 90’s, those first few years at Web FX Studios (later renamed Sapheo) and at ExactTarget.

TGFI has been a bit different in that respect. I was so head down in getting work done for customers and running the company, that I didn’t have time to reflect on it. Now that we’ve grown a bit, I can finally step back and breathe.

Indianapolis has been a great place to work, and I’ve done so with some incredibly talented people. As a collective, I’ve just never felt we’ve been able to break out and let the rest of the world know about it. Fortunately that seems to be changing as of late.

We’ve picked up some new projects with out of state funding, along with a few national campaigns for locally based companies. As an example, we just very quickly helped launch one for AuthorHouse at http://www.authorsacrossamerica.com/. There’s more coming, but you’ll just have to wait until they are ready!

As we talk around with our friends, this seems to be a trend for others as well that could help put Indy on the map. ExactTarget is probably the most well known web company here in town, but there are several others that are trying to help out. We used to share space with the guys who are working on the new search engine ChaCha. Two of my former co-workers, Chris Baggott (ExactTarget co-founder) and Ali Sales (ExactTarget, ChaCha) just announced that they are starting a new company, Compendium Software, to fix the broken gap with corporate blogging software.

Could this be a sign of changing times for Indy? I hope so. Now if only we can get the local VC’s to help out…