Lingo: Shadow Tech

I was at the recent ITA dinner talking to Rob Harles from Comscore about how prominent or interesting technology firms are in the Midwest that no one knows about. My favorite example is SSA. A company that nearly no one, even folks in the tech community here, has ever heard of. SSA is a Software 50 company and has sold nearly $800m worth of software in the past 12 months, has 3,500 employees and a $1.4B market cap. Another company is Navteq. Most people a) can't recall the name and b) don't associate them with Chicago (even here). Where else but in the Midwest could a $3.92B market cap technology company that powers nearly every map on the web and auto remain hidden in the shadows of obscurity?

Nearly every week, I come across surprise after surprise. Few people realize Archipelago (merged with NYSE) is based in Chicago. I stumbled upon TicketsNow only after 8 years of 80-100% growth there. The Midwest is the largest medical device hub in the US (roughly $82B in annual sales). The list goes on and on.

Rob had a great term for this phenomenon...it is Shadow Tech. Midwesterners don't tend to like to promote themselves and successful entrepreneurs tend to keep their heads down building their businesses. They hide in the shadows of the Midwest corporate scene. While this is admirable, it makes it more difficult to get critical mass and build out community when the "lobsters" are hold up in their caves.

The Midwest tech scene is much more vibrant than most people realize but, like an underground club, it is very challenging to find. This makes it ideal for venture capital (opaque, inefficient markets) but you have to work hard to uncover the opportunities.

I'll write in the near-term about why traditional networking efforts don't work well in this kind of environment. As a community, we need to experiment with different alternative models. The base is here but we need to connect the dots.