2019 Startup Spotlight | Columbus “


At Aware (formally Wiretap), we love collaboration – we’re a team of bold visionaries and eager collaborators who are smart, seasoned, and highly capable— tirelessly striving to redefine how enterprises gain insight from millions of human interactions within their digital workplace. We provide a suite of enterprise-grade SaaS products for risk management and intelligence extraction from leading collaboration technologies like Microsoſt Teams, Yammer, Workplace by Facebook and others.


Aware’s risk management platform known as ‘Aware’, offers a solution to remove common enterprise ‘red tape’ (think: legal, compliance, information security, culture protection) in order to successfully deploy collaboration technology. With Aware’s recently introduced Spotlight capability, organizations can now also receive real-time qualitative insights regarding the behavior of employees on their collaboration platform— including community health, benchmarking metrics and qualitative trends.


Leading research analyst firm Gartner recently named Aware as a Gartner Cool Vendor in Unified Communications and Collaboration Technologies, and we’ve earned the trust of some of the largest companies in the world, including AstraZeneca, Chevron, Keurig, Dr. Pepper, Wipro and many others.


10 Q


If you were to invest in one thing in Columbus (aspect, infrastructure, etc.) what would it be? Why?


Jeff: Public transportation options that better connect our outlying communities with our burgeoning downtown. Columbus is continuing to grow and the cost of housing is rapidly on the rise. Many people are finding themselves resorting to buying more affordable homes that are farther and farther away from the soon to be booming and bustling areas of downtown. It also just so happens to be farther from the many startups getting off the ground. We all love watching Columbus grow, but nobody loves sitting in traffic for hours on the way to and from work or to and from evening entertainment. I’d love to make our widespread community feel much smaller by finding better and faster ways to transport people around the region. I feel like we’re overdue for some sort of high speed rail system.


Q


It would appear that there is more buzz surrounding the Columbus entrepreneurial and startup community than ever before. What key factors are driving this growth? What’s missing?


Jeff: Without a doubt a few things have changed over the past few years that position Columbus as a prime location for starting your business. The successful exits of other startups in our region, like CoverMyMeds,


have most certainly drawn the national attention and proven that building a forward thinking business in a “flyover state” was possible. The CoverMyMeds exit to McKesson and Toa Technologies to Oracle have made it easier for entrepreneurs to answer tough questions about whether foundational elements exist here that are necessary for getting a successful business off the ground. New capital has moved into the region with the participation of strategic funds like Drive Capital, Draper Triangle and the Ohio Innovation Fund, making it easier for startups to get in front of strategic investors. The successful growth of The Ohio State University has attracted incredibly talented students who wind up joining startups or launching startups of their own. The relatively cheaper cost of doing business has encouraged a number of larger enterprises to set up shop in town, which has created a very healthy B2B market. The fact that you can access many of the nation’s top businesses in a single day’s trip from Columbus, can be quite compelling to any new business owner. Last but not least, the people of the Columbus community are so willing to help each other win, it’s become a prosperous and infectious personality of our own. I’m excited to be working with the incredibly talented people of Aware to build a growing business and we are all so very lucky to call this wonderful town of Columbus our home.


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