Don’t Overlook the Outliers

Pattern matching is an easy way to predict winners and an even easier way to miss them entirely.

- Steve Case

WHEN MEGAN GLOVER heard about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in 2016, she couldn't stop thinking about it. Megan wasn't a water expert, and her home near Indianapolis was far enough away that the contamination posed no immediate danger to her. But as a concerned mother, she wondered if there was a way for ordinary people to test their water and she found that the answer was no.

Megan was a marketing professional who had worked with startups. And the local startup scene was thriving, thanks in part to ExactTarget, a software company Salesforce had bought in 2013. Rather than move the operation to San Francisco, Salesforce had left it in Indianapolis. ExactTarget's founders, in turn, had doubled down on the city.

It made for the kind of supportive environment that spurred Megan to come up with an inexpensive product to address her contamination concern-a box containing a beaker and a prepaid envelope to send a water sample to an EPA-certified lab. Results would be returned via email. It was a no-brainer in some respects. And yet Megan had a hard time raising money for it, especially with venture capital firms from the coasts.