Entrepreneur Scott Dorsey, Purdue chief Mung Chiang talk leadership, more at Rally conference

Purdue University President Mung Chiang and High Alpha Managing Partner Scott Dorsey—two of Indiana’s most recognizable leaders in technology and innovation—shared the stage for a wide-ranging conversation Wednesday at the Rally innovation conference.

The conference, which began Tuesday and wraps up Thursday, is a first-year event organized by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures. The event, which aims to spur Indiana’s entrepreneurship and innovation activity, is aimed at business leaders, innovators and investors from both within and outside of Indiana. Elevate Ventures says just more than 3,000 people are expected to attend the three-day event.

Chiang and Dorsey’s conversation touched on topics ranging from leadership advice to Indiana’s entrepreneurial climate to Purdue’s plans to expand its Indianapolis presence. The talk was billed as a “bidirectional fireside chat,” meaning that each took turns asking questions of the other.

Dorsey said he is impressed with Chiang’s “speed and sense of urgency” as a leader, noting that this approach is not commonly present in academia.

Chiang said he learned the outlook as an entrepreneur earlier in his career, and it’s a valuable lesson for academia as well. The idea of waiting for perfection until acting is a mistake, he said. “The general tendency [in academia] is, there’s always another quarter, a year, another semester. But we need to understand that you’ve got to build the car while driving.”

Purdue and High Alpha, an Indianapolis-based venture studio, recently announced a partnership in which Purdue will occupy a portion of High Alpha’s office on Massachusetts Avenue, placing students and startups under one roof for collaborative opportunities.

The move is part of Purdue’s plan to expand its downtown Indianapolis presence as the university now known as IUPUI decouples next year, giving Purdue and Indiana University each its own separate presence in the city.

Chiang said the decoupling will incentivize both Purdue and IU to invest resources and attention in Indianapolis. “We’re going to have ‘1+1=3’ instead of ‘1+1=1.5,’” Chiang said.

Dorsey was a co-founder of Exact Target, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2013 for $2.5 billion. He left Salesforce the following year and went on to co-found High Alpha in 2015.

When asked why he chose to stay in Indianapolis after the Exact Target exit, Dorsey said it was in large part because of the people he’d met. As an Ohio native who had lived in many places before moving here, Dorsey said, “I was just astonished—everyone I met [in Indianapolis] was so high-caliber, so helpful, so collaborative. That meeting with one person led to another three, and those three led to another 10 … I felt very quickly integrated into the community.”

Local and state officials also showed great support for Exact Target, Dorsey said.

“So Indianapolis is home, I love it, I have no desire to move elsewhere and want to do everything in my power, to give back to the community, and show the gratitude that I really feel for all the support that I’ve had along the way, both at Exact Target and High Alpha.”

But Dorsey also said Indianapolis has some challenges when it comes to startup activity.

He said the market needs more founders, and more ideas. “I think that’s a big critique, sometimes, of markets like Indianapolis is that we’re building tech companies, but we’re not tackling tough enough problems.”

Offering business advice to the founders in the room, both Dorsey and Chiang emphasized the need to find one’s focus—and stick with it.

“Focus is just extraordinarily important, and blocking out the noise and making sure that you’re applying your limited resources in the most powerful and efficient way that you can.”

Chiang said one piece of wisdom that he comes back to often is to focus on people above all else. “It’s the ‘who’ before the ‘what.’ And it’s not just because, yes, we need the team to succeed. It’s that it’s only the ‘who’ that matters.”