Judy Sindecuse
Judy Sindecuse (CEO of Capital Innovators)
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Welcome
Today's interview is with Judy Sindecuse - CEO of Capital Innovators
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Name: Judy Sindecuse
Current role: CEO at Capital Innovators
Education (undergrad): Southern Methodist University
Education (graduate): Harvard Law School
Can you please discuss Capital Innovators and your role there?
I am the founder and CEO of Capital Innovators. Capital Innovators is an innovation engine that provides innovation consulting to startups, corporations, and universities. We started out as an accelerator program that helped startups. When I created it, I didn’t know it would be considered an accelerator program. At the time, in 2010, there weren’t really any accelerator programs around, so people were not familiar with that term.
I was basically just solving a problem. I was volunteering at ITEN, and I noticed that there were a number of companies who had some really passionate founders and were sitting on some really good ideas. But these founders weren’t getting the funding and mentorship that they needed to get to the next level. So, I created this entity (Capital Innovators) to help solve that problem.
To get Capital Innovators off the ground, I went around and talked to some high net worth individuals that I knew were doing some investing, and I said, why don’t we pool our money together and create basically an angel fund, and do angel investing through the fund so that we can hedge our risk. I also raised the idea of giving these founders mentorship, by way of experience, in addition to money.
That idea turned into Capital Innovators. At Capital Innovators, we have a 12-week boot camp style program that ~6 companies go through at a time. Last year, we received over 1000 applications from 56 different countries and 35 different states. The companies that we accept into our program get access to our office space at CIC, and we provide them with mentorship and a whole host of other perks: free office space, legal help, marketing help, human resources help, etc. All kinds of free perks!
The most important thing we give them, however, is mentorship. Our mentors act as a co-CEOs and basically help teach the founders how to be a good CEO. It’s a little bit like teaching a person to fish. It is not just helping them with their strategy on-hand: what they have to deal with today. But it is helping them come up with a system by which they can learn how to make appropriate decisions, hire the right people, and wear all the different hats that they have to wear as CEO. We help these founders seek out help and properly prioritize their time and resources in order to accelerate growth.
Capital Innovators has also helped corporations with their innovation efforts. We have done a full-on accelerator program on behalf of Amerenin conjunction with UMSL and are working with other corporations to help with their innovation efforts. We have also been ranked as a top accelerator for all 5years that they have been doing rankings. We have been ranked number 1 in several areas and are currently ranked third for our ability to get our companies follow up funding.
Do you have any past experiences that have helped shape who you are now?
When I left Law School, I practiced law for about a year before coming up with an idea for a business. It actually wasn’t my first business. I started my first business while I was in college, and I sold it in order to go to Law School. Anyway, I started a business because I had a problem that I was solving for myself, and I thought I could commercialize it to help others. I later moved back home to St. Louis to raise my kids. I grew up in St. Louis, and I moved back here to raise my kids because I think it’s a great place to raise a family.
In St. Louis, I then started two more businesses. All told, I had started six different businesses before I started Capital Innovators. All of the businesses were bootstrapped and all of them were profitable within six months. So, if I look back, apparently I have a knack for identifying emerging markets and making them profitable on the dime, which is the operational experience that I bring to the companies I am helping to mentor.
Did you ever get any funding for your companies? Or, were they all bootstrapped the full way?
They were all bootstrapped the full way. But, if I had life to do over, I would have sought money from venture capitalists. This was 20-30 years ago, however, and the landscape was different. Venture capitalist now might take 10% of your business for equity, but I spoke to venture capitalists right after law school and they wanted 90% of my company right off the bat. And, I said that’s not for me. Even at 90%, though, if I had it to do over, I think I would have taken the capital because I think it would have made a difference. I could have grown so much faster and been even more successful by taking money from venture capitalists rather than trying to do it on my own.
What do you like about doing business in St. Louis rather than in the East or West Coast?
First of all, the simple way of putting it is here you can be a big fish in a small pond. You know the idea that money grows on trees in Silicon Valley is false. There is a ton of competition for what is out there. In Silicon Valley, you are more likely to gain connections, but you are less likely to gain any practical business advice. Here, in St. Louis, the whole community, all of St. Louis, gets behind you and is pulling for you because frankly, the startup ecosystem is St. Louis’ last great hope for achieving the financial health that we experienced seventy years ago.
In fact, the reason I started Capital Innovators was because I went to an Alumni Association Meeting where Dr. Bill Peck was speaking. He was the Chairman of the Board at Innovate St. Louis at the time, which was the parent company to ITEN (back in 2010). And, what Dr. Peck was saying is that St. Louis is never going to convince a Fortune 500 company to move here, so the city should really stop putting its resources toward trying to make that happen. But, he said that if you look at the city’s top ten employers, seven of them were home grown. So, the answer for us [St. Louis] is to home grow our next big employer. Think Express Scripts! Fifteen or twenty years ago, Express Scripts was a tech startup and now they’re a Fortune 50 company.
When you talk about a mission for Capital Innovators, I would say that our mission is to help people become more innovative. But, another goal is to help the city of St. Louis. It is to help St. Louis become the thriving city that it once was with all of its corporations. And you know, we attract people from all over the world to come here. 85% of the companies we have invested in with Capital Innovators stay here in St. Louis. As for the ones that don’t stay here in St. Louis, it’s fine as long as they make us money so that we have capital to put back into the system until we find the next Express Scripts.
Are there any industries that you think are important to get into as a young college student?
If you want to be super employable, computer science or any other kind of Engineering is super important. In fact, there’s a funny video of Mr. Wonderful [from Shark Tank] giving advice to college students. He basically tells the students, if you’re going to college and you want to figure out what to major in in order to have a good job coming out, the number one major that you should pick is engineering. And, the number two major you should pick is engineering. Number three, is engineering. Any kind of engineering, you pick it, but major in engineering.
That’s not really my idea/quote, that’s Mr. Wonderful’s. Me personally, you know if I had my law degree to do over, I would have added an MBA to it. While I was there, I thought I didn’t want to go through an extra year of school. But, for what I have chosen to do with my life, an MBA would have been very useful.
As far as industry verticals, Healthcare and Healthcare IT is going to be hot. Financial Services, you know the financial world is changing fast with Blockchain technology and regulatory schemes. I think anything in the energy space is going to be really interesting and we have already been making great moves there. Within the computer science and Engineering space: Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain are two areas where very few people specialize but that are at the cutting edge of a lot of different things that are happening in these other industry spaces. If you can learn either of those skills, you’ll definitely be on the cutting edge of things.
Anything else?
My advice for a college student who is thinking about what they want to do is this... There are two things you have to think about. First, which people tend to put too much reliance on, and I think is actually a factor that people should be careful not to put too much reliance on is: What would you be proud to say you do at a cocktail party? You want to be proud of what you do. But, more importantly, you have to wake up in the morning and want to go do your job, on a day to day level. So, whatever it is you think you want to do, you should try to go shadow somebody and see what the day to day is like. When you wake up and have to get dressed and go to work, are you going to be excited about going to work or is it going to be just a job?
That is going to be the difference between having a job and having a career. When you talk about what are the hot spaces, you should pick the space that you are most passionate about, not the one that is going to give you the best job. You know, pick the thing that you can become so passionate about that you can dedicate yourself to it and you can become the best. Picking something that you’re not passionate about can enable you to make a living, but you will get more satisfaction out of life if you are doing something that you are passionate about.
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Looking Ahead
Next week's interview: David Karandish - Founder and CEO of Jane.ai, Board Member of Varsity Tutors, Former CEO at Answers.com
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