Matt Hunckler made a name for himself while he was a student at IU in Bloomington Indiana. It was there that he made his first successful exit as an entrepreneur and founder, but he wanted more. He wanted more for himself and for the startup community in Indiana and with that he created Verge.
Verge is a community of tech entrepreneurs, startups, software developers, and investors that’s grown to over 1300 active members. They meet every last Thursday of the month, which Hunckler has affectionately renamed VergeDay.
With 1300 members though, Hunckler is hard pressed to find a place to hold an event with that many people where effective pitches, networking and discussions can go on, so he limits the size of the events to a couple hundreds. He pre-warns the membership the day before the tickets go on sale and they sell out quicker than One Direction tickets would sell out for a free show at an all girls middle school. The Verge events are that popular.
Hunckler is also selective about who attends the events. He keeps them open to the community which doesn’t let shiest SEO folks in or the guy who opened up the topless car wash down the road. There are plenty of other events in town for those guys.
Verge is all about growing the community and making sure that everyone knows each other. Verge is about creating synergy among Indiana’s startup scene.
Hunckler has also been instrumental in other events like startup weekends and innovation showcase. The innovation showcase is now in it’s fourth year and is a conference for fundable companies to present their business idea in the fields of IT,alternative energy,life sciences,medical devices and industrial products. This year’s showcase features 50 area companies and will be held on July 12,2012 at Developer Town/Speak Easy.
Just like Super Nick Hunckler has his hands in everything. Heck, he’s even the editor for the Indianapolis edition of the startup digest.
Check out our video interview with Hunckler below:
Links we’ve got em:
Here’s the page for the Innovation Showcase July 12
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