26 / 74
26
BizVoice/Indiana Chamber – July/August 2017
COVER STORY
Columbus Start-Ups Thrive in Fish Tank
Call it fate. Or being in the right place at the right time.
The founders of ThickStat assert they would be doing something
else today instead of running a promising technology start-up in
Columbus if it wasn’t for the city’s co-working space, the Fish Tank.
Cindy Frey, president of the Columbus Area Chamber of
Commerce (which created and operates the Fish Tank), might say
there is more of a “by design” element to the ThickStat story.
Co-founders Ganesh Gandhieswaran and Gopinath Jaganmohan
discovered their mutual interest in starting a business after
Jaganmohan’s experience working at the Fish Tank and his floating the
idea to Frey of striking out on his own.
Gandhieswaran, ThickStat’s president, explains: “Gopi came to
me because he was going to move from Columbus to St. Louis. … He
was mentioning the chamber of commerce and the Fish Tank and how
he got a lot of insights. Gopi told me, ‘I’m kind of interested in
starting a business.’ I said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m also planning.’ ”
Frey then connected them to retired banker Charlie Farber, who
was a member of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), which
also operates out of the chamber’s office space. Farber became the
team’s financial advisor and connected them with venture capitalists.
The ThickStat team came together in the fall of 2016. They’re
launching their products this year: applications that work with natural
language processing and artificial intelligence (think of interacting with
your smart phone the same way you’d interact with Amazon Echo or
Google Home devices, offering diagnostic services, deep data queries
and even a library application).
“It’s a small place; there are a lot of connections and the chamber
of commerce is like a center point for all the things we have. That’s
the story. We’re really lucky,” Gandhieswaran asserts.
“I might have spoken to different people about starting a
company. I had no clue Gopi was going to start something like this. It
was the right people connected at the right time. You need that
community to make it happen, to bring people together. That
happened in Columbus for me. We are still going to work here.”
Catching lightning in a bottle
Frey knows a company origin like ThickStat’s is special.
“That (success) would not have happened if (Jaganmohan) hadn’t
been working in the Fish Tank. He wouldn’t be on anybody’s radar
(for starting a business). If one business like that gets started in our
community, it will have been worth it,” she asserts.
SUCCESSFUL
‘SWIMS’
By Charlee Beasor
The Fish Tank co-working space is leading to a variety of business community collaborations.