THE MAGIC OF MICROCLUSTERS: Top urban affairs blog praises Indianapolis' strategy of focusing on distinct marketing technology sub-specialty. 
   
Aaron Renn, an influential economic development thought leader and author of The Urbanophile (America's number one urban affairs blog), believes Indianapolis is on the right track with it's focus on marketing technology. He outlined benefits of the marketing tech strategy currently being pursued by tech executives with support and coordination from TechPoint.
 
Like most cities, Indy is targeting, you guessed it, high tech, life sciences, green tech, advanced manufacturing, and logistics. The main promotional organization for high tech is called Techpoint. (I should note this organization does double duty as a statewide group as well).
 
But somehow, organically, within tech generally Indianapolis had a lot of startups in the internet marketing space. There were something like 70 or so last time I saw someone who had made a list. One of them, Exact Target, was recently acquired by Salesforce.com for $2.5 billion. That’s a legitimate exit by any standards. Also recently, a content marketing cloud provider called Compendium was bought by Oracle for its own marketing cloud suite. (Terms not disclosed but surely much, much smaller).
 
When two tech bluechip names decide to go fishing in the same pond for companies in the same field, you start to think there’s something to it. (Salesforce and Oracle weren't the first either. Terradata bought out a company called Aprimo for $525 million a couple years ago). Wanting to build on the momentum, Techpoint just held a big shindig called M-Tech to launch a campaign they are launching in an effort to boost the city’s marketing technology cluster. READ MORE
 
Renn went on to say that Indy faces competitive challenges, and that the marketing tech efforts could fail if the pipeline of new companies"fizzles out" or if Indy ends up lacking the talent or funding to sustain the recent growth and notoriety. No one understands this better than TechPoint and that's why we're launching an unprecedented talent attraction initiative that will be announced in November. Also of note, HALO Capital Group (managed by TechPoint) has injected $20 million in angel funding into early-stage Indy startups, and there are a myriad of positive contributors from VERGE, Indianapolis Startup Weekend, the new Indiana Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Elevate Ventures, numerous incubators and accelerators and many others who help the tide rise for our community.
 
QUESTION: What else should we do as a community to ensure the long-term survival and growth of Indy's thriving marketing tech microcluster? Join the discussion by sharing your views in the comments section below, and share this post on Twitter and Facebook.
 

Watch the video above for a glimpse into what the Indy tech community is doing to support and grow its organic marketing tech ecosystem.