Indianapolis already had a real anchor sitting in this graph before this edition existed: Eli Lilly, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, genuinely headquartered here. The venture layer runs on a distinct model -- High Alpha co-creates companies through its own studio rather than just writing checks, with at least 23 confirmed studio-built companies (eight of them already acquired, including Lessonly by Seismic in 2021) -- a real number, though High Alpha's own public "45+" figure blends studio-built companies with later-stage Capital investments in already-independent companies like Salesloft and G2. Elevate Ventures runs the statewide layer: $222 million AUM, $197 million+ deployed into a claimed 600+ Indiana companies, of which the individual names are still being verified and added here one at a time. Marion County alone carries 971,822 people -- the largest single-county population of any market this site added in this pass. The stadium in this edition's own hero image carries its own history worth naming: the Colts themselves arrived in Indianapolis on the night of March 28-29, 1984, when owner Robert Irsay covertly moved the team from Baltimore using roughly 15 Mayflower moving trucks routed different ways overnight -- specifically to get ahead of a Maryland law that would have let Baltimore seize the team by eminent domain to keep it. A real, sharp contrast to Green Bay: one franchise structurally cannot be relocated, fan-owned since 1923; the other arrived in the dead of night, in one calculated move, precisely to avoid a legal attempt to stop it.
Region Stats
Total firms
44
VC / investors
2
Companies
33
Schools
9
Known For
B2B SaaS * Life Sciences * Venture Studio -- Venture Capital
