The TechEd Podcast

Microsoft, the Packers, and the Venture Firm Betting on Midwest Innovation - Jill Enos, Managing Partner of TitletownTech

• Matt Kirchner • Episode 210

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What happens when a legendary NFL team partners with a tech giant to fuel regional innovation?

In this episode of The TechEd Podcast, host Matt Kirchner sits down with Jill Enos, Managing Partner at TitletownTech — the one-of-a-kind venture firm backed by the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft. Jill unpacks how TitletownTech is redefining early-stage investing by embedding startups directly into industry, education, and community. From AI labs and autonomous robotics to sustainable agtech and nuclear fusion, Jill reveals how the Midwest is quietly leading a new era of tech-driven economic development.

Listen to learn:

  • How TitletownTech blends NFL roots with global tech leadership to drive innovation
  • Why Microsoft chose Wisconsin for its new $3.3B data center and AI Co-Innovation Lab
  • What makes the Midwest the perfect launchpad for startups solving real-world problems
  • How venture-backed founders are tackling challenges in energy, logistics, and healthcare
  • Why exposure to problems — not solutions — is the secret to educating tomorrow’s innovators

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

  1. Public-private partnerships can fuel real innovation
    TitletownTech was founded through a unique partnership between the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft, later joined by 25+ corporate investors like Schneider, Kohler, and AT&T. This model provides startups with not only capital but direct access to strategic partners, industry leaders, and market feedback that accelerates growth.
  2. The Midwest is a powerful engine for emerging technologies
    TitletownTech has invested in over 30 companies, including Realta Fusion (nuclear energy), Fork Farms (agtech), GenLogs (freight intelligence), and Cobionics (healthcare robotics). Microsoft’s $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant and the launch of the AI Co-Innovation Lab in partnership with UW-Milwaukee are cementing Wisconsin’s place as a tech and AI hub.
  3. Solving the right problem matters more than having the right answer
    Jill Enos emphasizes that successful founders are “obsessed with the problem” rather than fixated on one solution — a mindset educators should instill in students. Startups like Springbok Analytics, which uses AI to create digital twins of MRIs, thrive by iterating solutions through real-time market feedback and strategic industry partnerships.

Resources in this Episode:
Learn more about TitletownTech: https://www.titletowntech.com/

Partnerships mentioned in this episode:

Dive deeper into some of TitletownTech's portfolio companies that were featured in this episode:

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Matt Kirchner:

Matt, welcome into this episode of The TechEd Podcast. My name is Matt Kirkner. I am your host. We have a phenomenal individual joining us this week. I think the folks that tune into the podcast regularly know that I love professional athletics. I love professional sports, especially my beloved Wisconsin teams. In this case, the Green Bay Packers. Will talk a little bit about that. We love technology, of course, here on The TechEd Podcast. And I also have this closet fascination with business models, financial models, private equity, venture capital. Doesn't matter. We're gonna hit on all of these topics today on this episode of The TechEd Podcast, my guest is the managing partner of Titletown tech Her name is Jill Enos. I've gotten to know Jill pretty well over the course of the last six months, eight months or so. She's doing phenomenal things, not just in the state of Wisconsin, but all over the country, and really setting the example for how we can focus on innovation, how we can focus on incubating startups and doing it in really, really creative ways. It's my great pleasure to welcome in person to the studio. Jill. Enos, Jill, awesome to see you. Thanks

Jill Enos:

for having me. I love your platform, and I am so impressed with both the guests that you bring on and the audience that you speak to. It's really quite a remarkable set that you work with.

Matt Kirchner:

We certainly agree. I mean, we love the guests that come on the podcast. Nobody says no to the idea of securing the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. But you're exactly right. It's our audience that makes all the difference. It's all the teachers, the students, the innovators, the business owners and leaders and others that tune in on a regular basis to find out what's happening all across our economy in so many different sectors. One of the things I love, Jill about the work that you are doing at Titletown tech is you touch so many different sectors of our economy, so many different types of technology. We'll get into that. But let's start out with this managing partner at Titletown tech. What is your background and how did you end up in a role like this?

Jill Enos:

It's been quite an experience to be to this point, and not one that I would have necessarily predicted, but the work that we do at Titletown tech, and I want to share a lot about what the organization does, is really connecting innovation with industry and startups. And so my background I came into from first working with most recently with investors and startups in Wisconsin. Earlier I was part of a venture backed company, part of the leadership team wore all different hats in helping grow a young company to ultimately be acquired by AT and T on the East Coast. And then earlier in my career, I worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But originally from the Midwest, grew up just south of Wisconsin in rural Illinois. Yeah, absolutely,

Matt Kirchner:

there is something special about the Midwest. A lot of people, as you and I were talking during the warm up, don't really understand or recognize even some of the people in our region recognize what a hub in so many ways, we are for technology and for innovation. As a matter of fact, and I know we're going to talk about your partnership with Microsoft. When Microsoft President Brad Smith was in Southeast Wisconsin about eight months ago making a big announcement, he pointed to the legacy of innovation here in the state of Wisconsin is one of the reasons for their what ended up being a $3.3 billion investment here in our state. I happened to drive by that site this morning. I was down in commercial Wisconsin for an event. Absolutely stunning what Microsoft is doing here, building this data center. But that's just one example of the innovation that's happening in the Midwest, and certainly all this innovation taking place through and because of Titletown tech, give our audience a little bit of a flavor for the work that you're doing and why it's so important,

Jill Enos:

right? So Titletown Tech is a venture capital firm, but really more so a hub of innovation. So we invest in early stage companies as venture capital, which is an asset class that connects investors at the very highest risk, kind of early stage of a company that's in a high growth model. But beyond that, as a traditional part of venture capital, we're very not traditional in that most venture funds are made up of high net worth individuals or institutions that put the capital to work. We designed, from the beginning, to really be focused on industry and connecting our investors, who are all companies that invested in this fund, with the intention of seeking the venture returns, but also looking absolutely for connections to what's next, to be able to connect their industries and to be watching and learning and participating in the developing innovation and technology as it's emerging.

Matt Kirchner:

So staying really, really high level about that. Obviously, venture capital, the model is, in your particular case, you've got my assuming limited partners. These are all a lot of them, well known corporations and companies that are putting money into this fund, and then you're putting that money to work with startups so early stage companies that are had to have some big idea or some new technology that they're trying to bring to market, and your investors are such that they're willing to take a really high level of risk in that investment, knowing that they're going to have some home runs and probably some that maybe don't work out the way that you hope they will. We're. All in the name of sounds like return secondary and innovation and partnerships and driving the economy forward is kind of the main goal. Am I getting that right? I

Jill Enos:

wouldn't call return secondary. I would say they are equal. They are absolutely invested with the desire and expectation to see returns, but we want the innovation at the same time, and that connection point is what's unique, among many other things, some other really interesting aspects of what we do, is how our origin came about, and this really came from the vision of the leadership of the Green Bay Packers.

Matt Kirchner:

Hey, tell us about that, and Microsoft as well, right? That's true.

Jill Enos:

The Packers, as many of your listeners know, are the only NFL team that's community owned, and the leadership of the team really takes that responsibility to heart, to say, we have a responsibility to the community, to the state, to the region, to continue to advance the health of not just the team, but this whole community around it. And so ed policy, this was his initial vision, and Ed is soon to become the next president and CEO of the Packers, to succeed Mark Murphy. And both Ed and Mark have just been instrumental in bringing to life over the last five years, this mission of, how do we leverage the strength of an institution like the Packers, to connect the industry, the community and the business around also advancing startups. So that's attracting and retaining the best talent. It's leveraging the newest and most next level technologies, and it's finding those connection points that helps advance our industries in the region. And this initial thought was started several years ago, and just as that was coming to life, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, right, who's originally from Wisconsin, if I'm mistaken, that's right, connected with Mark Murphy, and Microsoft was looking at the heartland as a an area that was really important to their work. And so Brad and Microsoft really felt like this was an interesting opportunity to build a relationship that's like no other. There's nowhere else in the world that Microsoft is doing this right. And so the two became our anchor partners, Microsoft and the Packers, and then another 25 corporate partners joined as investors in the fund, and that capital we put to work in investing in early stage companies that are changing the face of industry,

Matt Kirchner:

any of those other investors that might be notable or recognizable to our listeners, that you can choose,

Jill Enos:

sure, a lot of Wisconsin companies, but not exclusively. We didn't want to operate in a bubble of Wisconsin. But you know, in the area of Schneider, Kohler, bolt construction, Aarons, lot of manufacturing, healthcare companies, BayCare clinic, but also companies outside the area. We have companies in Boston, New York, West Coast, because we wanted to be connected to capital markets AT and T is an investor from Texas, because they really liked the work that we're doing and how that connects to much of their innovation as well, drawing investors

Matt Kirchner:

from all over the country and some notable guests from the podcast in the past. So we had Laura Kohler on one time. She was fantastic. Dan Aaron's was one of our really, really early guests of Aaron's company, and he was terrific as well. And of course, Mary snap, who I know, you know, from Microsoft, has joined us in the past too. Some really great names that you've got as investors. Just this partnership with the Green Bay Packers is incredible. I've been to Lambeau Field probably 50 100 times. I don't even know how many, and it's just, it's magic, right? And every time you go back, it's magic. And this relationship that the community has with that team, that it's a team that's owned by the community. To your point, you know, the only team that, and the only arrangement that's like that there's something special going on in Green Bay, and I've got to believe that that philosophy and that spirit of collaboration and a partnership with the community is, it sounds like that's just a really, really key part of what you're doing

Jill Enos:

as well. It is absolutely we operate in a building right next to Lambeau Field, and we create a space where any of the founders that we invest in can work out of our space with us. Yet we have companies that are based all over the US and Canada. We really look at what we do as a center of place based efforts. But it's not exclusive to having to be there. It becomes place, becomes an asset, not a limiter, as a place to convene, as a place to connect, where the unusual intersections happen, both between founders who meet with and engage with industry, but also with each other or with resources that we can bring to life in this space. And while we've never made an investment movement here as a condition of investment, sure, we have had seven companies that relocated to Wisconsin because they really saw the value in being part of this ecosystem and network, you

Matt Kirchner:

know, that really shows the value of economic development, or whether it's venture capital or finding other ways to attract even early stage companies that may even have a great idea and a handful of employees, and then you attract them to a place like Wisconsin, as those organizations grow, obviously, really, really good for the community. I have been in your space, it is incredible. You know, it's one thing for people to talk about collaboration, but as you're walking through that space, and I was just there, actually, we'll give them credit, I think it was Alex and. Steve tank from fork farms that put that original visit together. And you do, you see people leaning over each other's desks. You see people standing in a conference room, writing on the walls, putting all kinds of ideas, you know, up on the on the wall to consider with other individuals sitting in these conference rooms. And that wasn't staged for me, right? I mean, I could tell that that was just an organic thing that's happening. So I would certainly encourage our listeners that get anywhere near Green Bay to come check out Titletown tech, because it really is an amazing spot to spend time and see what ideation in some of this progressive thinking around startup business and growth is what it looks like. So that was a real special time for me, special things going on in Wisconsin, not just in the Green Bay area, but you drive maybe two and a half hours south to Pleasant prairie Wisconsin, where Microsoft is building this huge, huge data center, $3.3 billion investment in the state of Wisconsin. Absolutely amazing. So talk a little bit about how the partnership with Microsoft extended beyond Green Bay. I know you're doing some really cool things as part of their investment in Southeast Wisconsin and pushing some of this innovation into the Milwaukee area. So talk about that. Sure.

Jill Enos:

Microsoft, just have to tell you, has been a phenomenal partner. Not only do they see the power and opportunity in Wisconsin, but when they come as a partner, they mean it. And we've just engaged with at the senior level, working with Brad Smith, with Mary snap, with Jason Zander, our Chief Technical Advisor, all of whom just make the kind of commitment that you would hope for when they engage in a community. And not only are they investing in building data centers, but they launched their most recent AI co innovation lab, the only one in the US that's not on the West Coast. They have one in Redmond and one in San Francisco. They also have labs in Japan, Uruguay and in Germany, and they've launched their latest one in Milwaukee. And this AI co Innovation Lab has a focus on manufacturing, and it's also unique in that it's partnered with the education institution UW Milwaukee and with Title tone tech, as we're helping to advance and bring in more companies to go through their lab. And Microsoft just looks at this as an opportunity to help lift and connect more of the industry in the state and jump forward with AI and just the use cases going through already have been amazing, from startup to mid size, manufacturer to large corporation, the types of cases that companies are bringing to the lab are about. Half of them have been focused on how to serve their customers better and expand revenue opportunities and meet customer needs. Other half have been around efficiency and enablement and optimization to really make their businesses stronger, but really taking a next level view of how do we leverage AI as it's changing rapidly in our manufacturing businesses, especially, but businesses across the state and region, and

Matt Kirchner:

I've had a long relationship with the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, particularly the connected systems Institute. Will give Joe Hammond, the executive director, a little bit of credit for his leadership. Mark Moni, who is the outgoing Chancellor, Mark retiring here in June of this year. A great friend of mine has been for a long, long time, and Mark was so involved, also, a former guest on the podcast, by the way, so involved with helping to launch the CSI. And it's just one of those other kind of understated things happening here in the Midwest, where people don't realize all the innovation. And then you point to the whole idea of partnering with manufacturers, and if my memory serves, I think it's initially like 135 up to 270 manufacturing companies that the CO Innovation Lab wants to partner with and drive AI into their business models and really assist and support those entrepreneurs and those businesses and integrating artificial intelligence into their business practices. Really, really important. I mean, there's just tremendous innovation that already happens in manufacturing. We had Aza TASH party on the podcast about a year and a half ago. He's managing director for McKinsey, huge consulting company, as you know. And he wrote a book. He runs strategy, by the way, globally for McKinsey, wrote a book called The titanium economy, in which he talks about 70% of innovation across the entire economy in the United States happens in small to mid sized manufacturing companies. And so if we are in the United States going to embrace this whole idea of AI and machine learning and related technologies and applied artificial intelligence, which is, you know, as is a key focus of mine, we have to do it through small to mid sized manufacturing and what do we have more of here in the Midwest than almost anywhere else in the country and anywhere else in the world, is small to mid sized manufacturing businesses. So the work that you're doing and others are doing at the CO innovation lab is really the timing for this is perfect, and you're setting the example. Certainly, there's innovation happening in other parts of the world, but setting the example in a lot of ways for the entire country, and doing it right here in the Midwest. So let's talk about the Midwest a little bit. We have listeners from all over the globe. Certainly some are familiar with places like Northern Illinois, where you grew up, or southern Wisconsin, where I did a lot of them probably not. What is unique about especially let's talk about startups. So you're in the venture cap world. What's unique about the startup environment here? The Midwest. It

Jill Enos:

starts, I think, with this history, this legacy of creative, industrious energy, go back 100 years, and the number of companies being created here was enormous, and continues to be, but it's not getting the same attention, for sure, that I think it was at that time. Yet we have just a culture, an ethos, of building and creating things, solving problems, fixing things. And to me, that creates a fabulous platform for entrepreneurship, for sure, and we need to attract and support more of those founders to be able to build and connect here. And I think today, more than ever, we're doing that the position that we have at Titletown tech is unique in that we're able to almost act as a scout to see some of what's coming in terms of next level technologies and really interesting entrepreneurs who are solving interesting problems and working to and then on the other side, we're seeing industry and some of their challenges, and we can make those connections. And I think of the Midwest is just a unique hotspot for that. We're engaged as a region, and it's, you know, there's something true about Midwest being a nice place, and people want to help each other. It's a lot of sharing and collaboration that way as well. The number of companies we work with, both large and small, that want to collaborate and find ways to solve problems together, right? I think it's really unique to the Midwest, without

Matt Kirchner:

question. I was having a conversation this morning with Tim Gibbons, who's the publisher of the Milwaukee Business Journal, and we were talking about exactly this topic, where you think about, first of all, some of the names in the Midwest, in my home state of Wisconsin, companies like Evinrude, Harley Davidson, SC Johnson, Kohler company, and, I mean, the list goes on and on, these are all companies. They're household names, right? And household products, and have been innovating here, in some cases, for well over 100 years. I mean, fourth and fifth generation companies, so that we really do have that spirit of innovation that is quietly alive and well here in the state of Wisconsin and here in the Midwest. And then, to your point, you get this opportunity to look at what's happening in the market, to be kind of the distant early warning system, if you will, for these other new technologies that are emerging. I mean, you get to look at, I'm assuming, you get to look at tons and tons of companies and startups that are coming to you with ideas and talking about investment to getting advice and and so on. What are some of the companies that are kind of part of the startup ecosystem is you do your work at Titletown tech, whether they're companies that you're invested in or things that you've seen.

Jill Enos:

Sure we've invested today, we're in over 30 active companies that we work with from all over the country. About half of those are in Wisconsin, a very recent example of Canadian based company came in in one day. This is just earlier this year, in January, in a one day visit with our team, and what we were able to connect them with, this is a healthcare robotics company. Okay, they were able to meet with a medical system in our region that gave them a totally different view on what their rural market opportunities might be for this medical robot that enabled an autonomous ultrasound system and to be able to understand what their customers and partners might develop or need from them. They were also able to meet with the general manager of the robotics function within Microsoft who was visiting with us that day, to get technical guidance and advice, and then work with a number of people from our team about thinking about pricing structure, business model, how they might build in the market, how they might create partnerships, and all of that kind of in this connection, point of engagement that is helping them now, we've invested in them. It's company called cobionix, and it's helping them now to start building for the future. So that's a company, for example, on the medical side, but also in robotics. Sure, fork farms you mentioned earlier is another company indoor hydroponic growing systems. That's a category that a lot of companies have tried and failed in, right? And fork Farms has found a really unique niche in building ag tech systems very effectively, and they are growing very well. They have their entire supply chain really based in Wisconsin, right? And they've sold to all 50 states in 12 countries, and they're doing that all from Wisconsin, and changing the way people think about the most efficient water and energy system to be able to grow that you can grow in a world where climate is changing, how people think about access to food

Matt Kirchner:

well, and their angle on education as well, and they're focused on education and having gotten to know both Alex and Steve, and they're doing it for all the right reasons, right? I mean, if you start with trying to make money first and your mission Second, it never seems to work all that well. And if you start with doing really, really important work for whatever reason, I've learned, the economic success always comes, but it's because you're doing the important work, not because you're focusing on that.

Jill Enos:

We see that all the time with startups. I mean, it really to be able to go after something as hard as building a company from scratch, you have to be mission driven, right, and just truly obsessed with what you're solving. Yes. So a couple other fun companies. There's a company called Gen logs, okay, we met this team. They're based in Virginia, in the DC area. Yeah. Three former CIA guys who now talk about it as they used to track terrorists, and now they track trucks, and they've developed a freight intelligence system that really the supply chain world has never seen before. They're able with a mixture of sensors, cameras, D, o, t, data, all sorts of different data sources to triangulate and have full awareness of the supply chain and the movement of trucks, trailers and freight across the US. Wow. And have met the needs of shippers, brokers, carriers and so many more, because they're able to predict where the supply chain movements are headed. Yeah. When they got started, we met them about a year ago, and they came to Green Bay in their first meetings that we connected them to industry players. They have three customers that signed up immediately, wow, from the Upper Midwest, because this is an area where freight matters, where movement of goods matters, and they were able to just get immediate traction while they the companies remains based in DC. They put employees in Green Bay, and they have a whole customer base here. They spend a lot of time in this area, and they're really having a big impact in the world and supply chain. So it's just fun to see that growth Absolutely.

Matt Kirchner:

And you think about, you know, the first company you met, Cobi Onix, and it really that's a great example of where you're adding tremendous value, right? Because if I'm a startup, and I'm thinking about, okay, what are the really, really important things? Well, first understanding my market, and here you're you're putting them in touch with a health system that plugging them into people that can give them great advice and listen to their value proposition. And so on the technology side. And you know, who wouldn't love to have somebody, a senior leader at Microsoft, giving them advice about the technology side of their business, and then the business model part of it, which is really two parts, the, you know, the venture cap and the capitalization of a company, and understanding the investment models and the options. I mean, that's part of it. But then there's just the day to day execution in a business. They're both important. You can't do one without the other, and being able to tap into your leadership team and your group of subject matter experts in the area of both capitalizing a business and operating a company. I mean, am I getting that right? Is that really kind of the magic of this kind of intersection of all these different things that you can bring to these startups? That's absolutely

Jill Enos:

right. It's the mixture of all those because a company can't survive on just finding a customer. It's got to be customers building the market, understanding how to keep up on the technology side, understanding and really thinking ahead strategically on how to build and design their pricing model to have competitive advantage. It's just one of those unique things that we can put all together in our model because of the strength of this Wisconsin ecosystem and the partners that come together that are interested in advancing innovation with us? Yeah,

Matt Kirchner:

absolutely. And I gotta believe that the startups that end up having the opportunity to work with your team feel like, in some ways, they died and went to heaven in terms of being an entrepreneur, right? I mean, you've got all these resources at your fingertips, and it doesn't mean that they don't have to work really, really, really hard, that they don't have to be really creative, that everything is going to work out the way that they expect it's going to, or that there aren't some failures. There aren't some failures along the way, but to have all of that help and all of that assistance, I mean, it's really a testament to the incredible work that you're doing. Is you see both startup companies and some really, really cool technologies. You mentioned a few of the companies you're working with as you look kind of either to the present or the future, either with your own portfolio companies or other things that you're seeing. What are some of those technologies you have your eyes on? Jill, it's

Jill Enos:

great that you asked that because the landscape is changing so fast, you're more than anyone connected to some of the work in AI that affects all businesses. We've had a really interesting seat, especially with Microsoft, but because of the other partners we have in seeing how rapidly AI is changing robotics and how we're seeing now natural language programming robotics, where someone working on the assembly line can talk to the robot and explain what it needs to do differently, not having to code it. We're seeing changes in autonomous systems, where camera systems are operating in a way that they can see around corners, and we have a company that we're talking to now that really is building in that design. We're also looking at next level of energy. Our partnership with the University of Wisconsin, both the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Madison, and the system gives us, and that was one of our original partners, by the way, with Microsoft and the Packers, we knew higher education was a critical piece of all of this, and it's a fundamental part of Wisconsin strength, and our partnership with the University has been very powerful. Most recently, we invested in a company out of UW Madison that's called Real to fusion, and it's a nuclear fusion company. And you would have said three or four years ago that nuclear fusion was decades away. We really feel like this is just a handful of years away, wow. And to be able to see that come out of Madison, for us to be able to help connect both invest capital, but connect them into the market. Got the paper industry, fabulous industry, to be able to take advantage of fusion energy as a future energy source. And we. Already made connections with realtors team and some of the industry players in Northeast Wisconsin that can help them to see what's possible in the future. And we all are experiencing and seeing the need for energy, and the rapid demand across the board in globally for energy. So we know it's an important area to be thinking about.

Matt Kirchner:

No doubt about it, one of the things I love is creating images on, in my case, mid journey, right? So I love going and just making something up, right? Show me a beautiful cabin on a mountain lake in the middle of Colorado, and then it just goes, and it uses AI to just create a picture of that. I mean, it still blows my mind that you can do that, or I need a really cool background for a slide. And 11 seconds later, after telling mid journey what I want, it prints it out. One of the things I always feel a little guilty about is somebody told me, or I read, about six months ago, that to create one image using artificial intelligence uses the same amount of energy as it takes to charge your smartphone from zero to 100 and it's like, wow, that's kind of crazy. Or another one I heard was that training a generative, pre trained transformer like chat GPT just once, requires the same amount of energy that can be used to power 130 homes for a year. I mean, so you really think about some of these advancements in the areas that we're talking about, data centers, artificial intelligence, machine learning and so on, requires tremendous amounts of energy. And then you think about to connect that to all right? There's all kinds of ways that we can generate energy, and probably the greenest way, if you forget about, at least for the moment, with the risk that might go along with it, is nuclear energy. And then you tell him, using fission, right? So splitting an atom, and now you're talking about using fusion technology, which is way greener, way safer, produces more energy. And so some of these worries that we have about the things that are happening in AI, the things that are happening in the processing and storage of data and so on, some start to mitigate that. So on one hand, you've got really cool relationships with organizations like Microsoft, who I know are super conscious about the Energy Impact and consumption and sustainability of their business model, building a data center, and we could look to the future of literally being able to power that data center using nuclear fusion in a way that is way safer than really, and way greener than any way that we have right now to create energy. And you're right in the middle of that. Am I getting

Jill Enos:

that right? That's exactly right. I think that we look at Wisconsin, so many people think, Well, why would you be doing all this in the Midwest, and why is Wisconsin a place for that? And just as you're describing it, it's it's a good reminder that the proximity in Wisconsin to the key industries and manufacturing and agriculture and healthcare that are truly on the cutting edge and in the highest need for technology transformation, including with energy sources, there's no better place to be in terms of really being able to be connected to experts and problems and opportunities. And I think we're just in a unique spot, the state in the upper Midwest. Yeah, there's

Matt Kirchner:

so much, so many great things going on in the Midwest. You know, we had Dale coyengo, who's the president of the Milwaukee metropolitan Association of Commerce, on the podcast about six months ago, and most notably, we traded grade point averages from high school in that particular episode. Neither one of us were great high school students, so that was kind of fun, but he talked about the Midwest. We don't have hurricanes, we don't have earthquakes. Floods are relatively few and far between from a geopolitical sense, we're really landlocked. We're right here in the middle of the country, and so to really safe place to be able to invest in, to think about the future. So just, just another example of how we're bringing some really, really cool things here. And again, for you to be right in the middle of all this has to be super, super exciting. Again, in working with all of these emerging companies, emerging technologies, whether they're in the logistics space, they're in the sustainable agriculture space, you know, they're in the energy space, all these really cool companies. I'm sure you spend a lot of time counseling them about some of the challenges they can expect as they're firing up their business models and getting into, you know, an entrepreneurial environment. It's one thing to have a great idea and something that somebody else is willing to bet on. It's another thing to execute on that. What are some of those challenges Jill, that you think startup space, and that if our, you know, if we've got budding entrepreneurs in the audience, students and so on, that are thinking about doing something like this in the future, you know, what should they be thinking about in terms of the challenges that'll be in front of them?

Jill Enos:

Well, there are no shortage of challenges when you're building a company, and it's the best entrepreneurs that see that as a grand opportunity. Talent is always challenge. I am a big believer that Wisconsin is a great source of talent, and we're seeing some of that come to life now. We've got a AI company in Delafield, just outside of Milwaukee, that is building really next level technology around using AI in images, geospatial data and video. And they've got talent. They're attracting from around the country that wants to be in Wisconsin, to be building, not a bad place to be absolutely and they're doing work in national security around the country, and they're also working with manufacturing companies in our backyard, looking at some of their data needs using visual data. And so I think. That when people say, oh, there's a challenge with talent, I say, yes, there's a challenge, but it's very solvable. It's it's a matter of having interesting things to work on and big problems to solve, attracts really smart people. So talents one, I think being connected to the market is one of the most important things that a startup needs at the beginning to get real time iterative feedback about what they're building. There's nothing worse than building something nobody wants, right? And if you can be learning from the market real time as you're building, it changes how you use your capital and how fast you can grow. So we had a company based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Springbok analytics. They're using AI to build digital twins of MRI systems cool so that they can predict the doctor's medical system can work with the patient and predict where there's potential future injury or where they might have more decision support in a surgery. Sure. And while the company remains in Charlottesville, because that's where the tech was born out of, they have employees in Wisconsin. They're working with GE Healthcare as a partner. They're working with UW Madison to evaluate some of the athletes. They're working with so many different people across this state. And I think of that as like when you ask about what challenges does a startup have, it's getting access to a market where they can learn real time and be iterative. And the environment that we've continued to create is one where we want that iterative market feedback to help them succeed. Third thing, in addition to market and talent, is just having the right technology and moving fast enough with technology right and that's another thing that we go out of our way to make sure and with fantastic partnership with Microsoft. But we go beyond that. Microsoft has never expected that we use only Microsoft technologies. So our startups use AWS and Google Cloud and all of those, but making sure and helping those companies to be able to stay ahead, especially today, where the tech is changing faster than most of us. You know, week to week, we're all learning about a new tool or a new capability, and it's it's just critical for startups to be able to build on that as well. Absolutely,

Matt Kirchner:

Wayne, and you think about just the need for, in some cases, specialization and figuring out what you're really, really good at, we run into it, frankly, a lot in education, where you used to have a teacher that taught everything right. And now, as things in technology moves faster and faster, it's like, how in the world can you even keep up with all of that? And the answer is, you can't. You have to rely on other people. You have to rely on other technologies. You know, you talk about the idea of using technology in the healthcare field, whether it's, you know, using AI along with an MRI machine to predict future concerns and so on, which I just think that's, that's like the coolest thing ever, really, really important, but also making sure that we have the human in the loop along the way. I was just having a conversation this morning with someone from freighter south, a senior executive there, and talking about exactly that, how we can apply artificial intelligence, whether it's in the work that a doctor is doing, a nurse is doing, an analyst is doing, but we still have to have that human in the middle of that whole process, which is really interesting, moving backwards through what you just said, also talking about the idea of being in the idea of being in the market and knowing the market. And back in my days of leading Kaizen and continuous improvement events, my thing was always go to the gemba right, the Japanese word for where the action is right. And in so many cases, especially if I'm technical, especially if I'm the designer person, and I'm really, really geek out on the tech, which is amazing, remembering that at somebody at some point you got to meet the people that are going to use that. And that are going to use that and understand what the real needs are. To your earlier conversation about the company that had access to the health system. And, you know, by working with Titletown tech and being able to talk directly to the customer, that's really, really important. And then you started, I think, where so many of these conversations do with with talent, and I think you're exactly right. We hear people complain about you used to be the millennials. Now it's the Gen z's. I, in fact, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal this week that just fascinated me. Said 11% of Gen Z's are taking a parent or a friend along with them to a job interview. Why not attend? I'm like, Well, come on. But on the flip side, and we continually find young people in our ed tech companies that if you find the right ones, it's amazing what they'll do, and they expect a different work environment. It's not the days of punching a clock at eight in the morning and working till five and doing exactly what the boss says and just being an automaton. Those are gone if you want the really, really good Gen Z folks that are going to be able to think on their own, are going to be innovative, are going to add tremendous value to the organization. So we have to think differently about how we leverage those people in the environment that we give them. But to your point, if you show them an environment where they feel like they can thrive, where they feel like they can add value, for so many of them, it's more. It's about more than making money. It's about making a difference, and if you can create that environment for them, super, super important. So I think you nailed that exactly on that talent topic, which is where you started. And let's kind of continue on that conversation. Tell us a little bit, Jill, about how you're thinking about talent, how we can prepare talent. Are the things that we could be doing differently, both kind of on a micro level in an area like Green Bay or in a specific educational environment, and on a macro level. In general, in terms of making sure that we have this talent that's going to fuel the next generation of innovation here in the United States. I'm

Jill Enos:

glad you asked, because one of the things about your audience that I love is that they're touching the talent. It's those that are bringing that education at the earliest level. And that's exactly what we should all be thinking about, is how the students in today's K 12 and university are impacting what's ahead. I would say, more than anything, it's creating exposure. And the more that students are exposed to different ways of thinking and different types of problems, the creativity is there. It's just giving them room to experiment. And so I'm a big believer in how do we develop talent is creating lots of opportunities for them to see problems. Sure, when we think about startups and investing in the best teams, we want them focused on the problem, not the solution, because we find that when you're building something that's new in the market, if you're focused on the problem, you're probably going to keep working the solution, and it may change, right? But as long as you keep that focus on this is the problem I'm trying to solve, you can get there if you come in really bent on a single way to approach it. Those are the startups that struggle interesting, and I think of that with students as well. And as students are learning, if they're coming at it as a one way to solve a problem approach, they will be much more limited, same as an entrepreneur, than if they're looking at the problem to say that's a really interesting problem. What are 20 different ways I could come at that totally and I just think it changes your view whatever business you end up in, whether you're a founder or whether you're a doctor or whether you're a welder, it's having that creativity and freedom to explore and design a solution. Yeah,

Matt Kirchner:

so many things that occur to me as you're going through that answer. I mean, the first of which is, I always think about going back to the Kaizen days again, and for what it's worth, and the audience has heard this before, but I had about a 10 year period in my life where I was working with manufacturing companies all over the country on improving process and driving waste out of process. And so we would use this, you know, the Japanese Lean approach called Kaizen, where we would generate continuous improvement in an organization. One of the things we always said is, when you're facing a problem, we call it, find five ways, right? So I've solved that problem five different ways before you pick or come up with five solutions before you pick the best one. You're saying, come up with 20 different solutions before you pick the best one, and I love that. And then, as you say, focus on the problem and not the solution. I mean, that is certainly important for an entrepreneur, certainly important for an innovator, but just important in life. I mean, how many relationships and conversations do we come to with the answer and get so hell bent on pushing our solution for the problem, rather than saying, What is the problem we're trying to solve, which, by the way, to your point A, is going to change over time. B, the more we focus on the problem, the more we're going to understand it, and the deeper we're going to go and see a solution today isn't necessarily a solution tomorrow, and the first solution we come up with isn't necessarily the best solution. It probably is never the best solution, because the more we talk about it, the more we think about it, the closer we're going to get to the perfect solution. And no solution will ever be perfect, but the closer we can get, the better off we are. That's really, that's a really, really thoughtful response, and something that I hadn't thought about. So focus on the problem, not on the solution, and the solution will figure itself out along the way. I also think about all my years about whether it was running businesses or manufacturing, how often we get focused on the wrong stuff. We talked before about focusing on mission and not on not on money. I had a mentor Tell me now, 30 years ago, when I was all giving some big presentation about how we were going to make a company profitable, and he said profitability is just a result. He's like, profitability comes from doing the right things in the organization, the right things in the business. And really, solutions are just a result of focusing on the problems and then figuring out how we could solve through that problem. And if we come up with the best solution, and we're in touch with the market and we understand what our customers want and what they're thinking now we've got that magical solution that we can bring to market and have a prayer of being really, really successful with it. Absolutely,

Jill Enos:

it's fundamental to starting and growing a business. Absolutely, you know, making sure you're you're solving something that needs to be solved exactly

Matt Kirchner:

and long before we started or grow to a business, long before we're focusing on the problem or solving something that needs to be solved. We've got to have these students that are inspired toward whether it's being an entrepreneur, inspired toward technology, as we think about technical education, as we think about STEM education. Jill, how should we be thinking? I mean, you're seeing a lot of these. I know not all of your founders are young people, but certainly a lot of them are. I'm sure a lot of the companies you look at are founded by younger people. What do our educators need to be thinking about in terms of preparing that next generation of whether it's an entrepreneur or a technologist or what have you,

Jill Enos:

there are just so many opportunities today. As I mentioned earlier, it's exposure to problems, and it's interesting as we've expanded our opportunity with cell phones and all technology that you would think everybody's seeing more. And the algorithms tend to drive and narrow some of what our younger people are seeing, and so they get a repetition of the things they had been seeing before. And you know, as someone with kids, I've witnessed that as well, and it's something I feel like as educators, as parents, as community members, we have to work hard to make sure that this whole idea of getting opportunities to see beyond what you're normally fed and whether that's in your classroom or on your computer or or in your friend group, but just trying to expand that view. And I'm also seeing just it's about Unlocking Potential, and educators today just have what feels like an enormous responsibility, yeah, but also opportunity to unlock potential. And when you can give students that chance to feel like they can come at something from a different view, if they can see that there are more than one ways to approach something, they're Unlocking Potential. Yeah, absolutely. I

Matt Kirchner:

had a conversation not too long ago with actually another former guest on the podcast, but a superintendent of a school district out west of here in western Wisconsin, this observation that he made is just stuck with me. And he said, if you look at now the average classroom in his district, and he said the range of student potential, or I guess, of their knowledge, ranges depending on the subject. It's nine grade levels. So he said, if you have a freshman in a high school that you may have one student in that classroom that is doing math, for instance, or English at like a freshman or sophomore of college level, and another student that's doing the same thing at a second grade level in the same classroom. And then you think about that diversity of background and experience and all kinds of reasons why one student might be ahead or or a little bit behind. But then think about that poor teacher that has somehow has to deliver learning to a cohort of 20 or 30 students with a range with literally a nine grade range in terms of what their their subject matter expertise is. And so I think we, a lot of times, we don't give our student, our teachers, enough credit for the challenge that they have of trying to teach in this day and age. On the other hand, to your point, all of these tools that are starting to emerge for things like self paced learning and experiential learning and hands on learning that allow us to unlock the potential on an individual student basis, and and we all have a teacher, at least, most of us have a teacher or a group of teachers that showed us we could do something we didn't know we could do, or that we had a skill we didn't know that we had, or that we just instilled confidence in us that we could be something that we had no idea that we could be. That's the magic of an educator, and then that's how we unlock the potential of the next generation and create that next generation of entrepreneurs through our education system. And I know as we think about education, one of the questions I love asking our guests, because everybody has some different view and some unique view about their education journey, or their own or their kids or somebody else's that they focus on. And if there's one thing in education, that one belief that you have in the world of education, Jill, that others might be surprised by, what would that belief be?

Jill Enos:

I think there's a natural assumption that in business, if you're building a business, that your background is business, yeah, and I think that's just absolutely not true. And in fact, the most creative people are those that come into business because they're creative. And we've seen founders like Alex tank, majored in music, was an opera singer before he built a Ford farms. Yeah, we have founders who come into business from law, we have founders who come into business from healthcare or education, and I think it's just so fundamental that as teachers are helping to open the doors for students that they don't let the student feel like they can't pursue a wide variety of interests and still have the opportunity to shift gears to build a business after they've been a teacher. Or there are just so many different avenues that I think there's a limitation that sometimes, as a society, we put on people, and we say, Oh, if you're this kind of major that sets you up for this path, right? And today, more than ever, there's no predefined path that we just have to continue to think of education is Unlocking Potential and creating doors for people to walk through, no matter what steps they've taken before.

Matt Kirchner:

Absolutely well, and I love that you said that. The truth is that, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs, you do as well, I've seen people emerge in businesses. The two probably best business leaders I had in my manufacturing days on the operation side were both people that graduated from high school got jobs in manufacturing and just started their career. In one case, one of them is running now a billion dollar company with a high school degree no formal business education knows more about business than almost anybody I know, but learned it all on the job. Second, one, same kind of thing, running a smaller business, but they're both chief executives of companies. We have people in our ed tech businesses that come from the world of education, in one case is, I think we were talking about before an English major, they come to a business model with an intellectual curiosity and a desire to do something different and to learn and an open mind. And it's unbelievable what those people can do. So I think that's a lesson for a lot of people, right for our teachers. You're going to have your high flying business student that you know is just going, you know, destined to be some financial engineer, and that's awesome. Send that person on that journey, but don't discount the student who's fascinated by music or by art or by English or by some other discipline, and maybe that becomes their career, and maybe they find their way into entrepreneurship. So really important lesson for our teachers, important lesson for the students, of course, as well, is that you are not defined by whatever your interests are in ninth grade, right? I mean, there's all kinds of career opportunities, all kinds of directions your life can take. Same thing for our parents, and same thing for anybody who is hiring that next generation of talent leading businesses is that, yeah, go to Harvard, go to Yale, go to Duke, hire your MBAs. That's awesome. Nothing wrong with that at all. But there's a lot of other places that we can look for for talent. So one final question for Jill, you know, says we're wrapping up our time here on The TechEd Podcast. I keep talking about this, I think, all afternoon, Jill, but it's a question we'd love to ask every single one of our guests. It's our last question that we'd love to pose to them. And that is, if you go back in time to that 15 year old Jill you're growing up in Northern Illinois, not too far from where we are now in Mequon, Wisconsin. And you could give that young lady one piece of advice. What would that piece of advice be? I'd

Jill Enos:

give two. Okay. First advice would be, become a Packers fan. Started as a bear fan finally got my allegiance right, but I'll find our way eventually. Some take longer than others. Second and more importantly, you know, what I would tell my younger self is the reminder to never underestimate the power of people and relationships. Absolutely, we have this ever changing world. There will always be a new challenge, a new up and down to deal with a new technology, or even just a new problem to solve. But the reality is, all these things we can create and change and manage through and humans are amazing. What we can create and bring to life through the power of people, it just continues to blow my mind, and so much of that is built on the relationships and the investments we make in the people that we're connected to, those like us and those not like us. And that, to me, is what makes all of this the most exciting and energizing of the work that you do, that I do, is the power of people and the relationships we create. Yeah, it's

Matt Kirchner:

energizing indeed, and and especially now it's important, point with the advent of robotics and automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, all of these different technologies that we have to do work for us. And a lot of people think that maybe in the future, the world of work will be all technology. The truth of the matter is, at its core, it's about the relationships that we have with each other, the relationships that we have with other people, the way that we inspire them. They inspire us. And you're right. There's just no limit to what human beings can do. And the power of people is absolutely amazing. And so build those relationships with anybody and everybody. So glad that we're building this relationship. Jill, every time I get together with you, I learn something. You're such a thoughtful person, doing amazing things at Titletown tech for all the right reasons. So thanks so much for being with us on The TechEd Podcast.

Jill Enos:

Thanks for hosting me, and thanks for providing this platform to so many people and to reach such an important audience in advancing education across the region.

Matt Kirchner:

Thank you for saying that. And we do think our work is really, really important, as is yours. So those words are golden to me and can't thank you enough. Can't thank our audience enough for joining us on this episode of The TechEd Podcast, had such a deep, amazing conversation here with Jill Enos, and can't thank her enough for being with us. Also want to make sure we're pointing everybody to the show notes. We have the best show notes in the business. You will find those at TechEd podcast.com/enos that is TechEd podcast.com/e N, O, S, when you are down there, you know, you'll find us all over social media, Instagram, Facebook, tick, tock, LinkedIn, wherever you go to consume your social we will be there. Reach out, say hello. We would love to hear from you, and can't wait to see you again next week on The TechEd Podcast. You.

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