Meet Eric Gautschi, Co-organizer @ Hustle Entrepreneurship Conference / Co-owner @ Matchcut Productions

How would you describe the startup culture in Nebraska?

I think the startup culture here in many ways feels like a reflection of the broader culture of the area. There’s an understated, unassuming quality. People more or less keep their heads down and do the work—as opposed to focusing more on the self-promotion side. There’s more steak than sizzle. 

At the same, the spirit of friendly collaboration and approachability that’s very much a Midwest calling card is ingrained in the startup culture. You have various pockets of the startup ecosystem that are really thriving and bringing people together. But I think the downside to this “understated quality” is that a lot of the great things that are happening are flying under the radar. Not enough people know about them, and you end up with a somewhat fragmented or siloed community. I believe that’s fixable. And that’s really a big part of the impetus for starting the Hustle Entrepreneurship Conference.

How do you balance taking risks and making calculated decisions in pursuit of innovation?

You can’t be an entrepreneur if you aren’t willing to take risks. If you want to achieve big things, you need to take some big swings. To continue that metaphor, no matter who you are, it doesn’t make sense to swing for the fences every time you step up to the plate. That drive to innovate—to create something better—never goes away. But you need to balance that out. 

A lot of it comes down to timing—after a thoughtful analysis, including listening to your own instincts—to decide when to take those big swings. For example, being a first mover on an idea before the market is ready for it makes for a great story, but it’s usually one with a not-so-great ending.

How do you define success and what metrics do you pay the most attention to?

Earlier in my career, I would have said growth. Growth was the organizing principle, the mindset, the goalposts at the end. I would still say growth is part of it, but I believe it’s deeper than that. 

Sustainability, I think, is a better answer. How do we build something sustainable? How do we build something that can not only continue to exist but evolve and get better over time? That’s really a shift to a longer-term outlook with metrics from the lens of long-term risks and opportunities rather than performance in a snapshot of time. Things can look rosy or gloomy in the moment, but there might be indicators that the longer-term outlook could be quite different.

What are the top one or two challenges / opportunities Nebraska startups face?

Labor force and image. On the labor side, there are all kinds of interesting things going on. The move to remote work, accelerated by the Covid era, is really rewiring work culture. The downside, for me, is I think we’re losing a lot of the magic that happens when people are in a room together. But the trade-off comes with enormous upside. We can build teams from a much deeper talent pool, where you have highly skilled people working from different places all over the country or even around the world. The move to remote also can mean significantly lowering your operating costs because you don’t need the same physical footprint for an office anymore. 

At the same time, there are a lot of jobs that you just can’t feasibly fill with a remote workforce. I’m thinking of a few industries that are particularly vital to this region: agriculture, manufacturing and construction. They’re tackling the labor shortage challenge in a different way. Look at new construction and ag equipment that’s more efficient and precise, the increase in automation tools in factories and now the intersection of AI with these other technologies. 

Bigger picture, though, the image and reputation of Nebraska have a big impact on our labor force. Are we able to attract people to the region and keep them here? Are we able to offer a compelling reason not to leave to our younger generation of workers? Image-wise, Nebraska doesn’t have the flash or appeal of a lot of places in the popular imagination. But, I think there’s a real opportunity for us to lean into what we are.

Nebraska is a place with relatively low costs of doing business and low cost of living. The culture here, I would argue, is very open to pursuing new ideas, and there are typically fewer barriers to entry that you might encounter in other markets. In a lot of ways, there’s more you can do here. And those conditions feel ripe for startups.

What is one emerging industry or technology that you believe will have a significant impact on the Nebraska startup ecosystem in the next few years?

AI feels inevitable at this point. Couple that with quantum computing and we have no idea yet how transformational that’s going to be for every single industry, every single startup founder and every single employee. But we do know the change is going to be profound, in terms of both opportunities and challenges. 

In my business, filmmaking and video production, AI is already having an exponential impact in terms of increasing speed and decreasing costs, and we’re barely scratching the surface in terms of what the tools can do. There will be unintended consequences of this technology and potentially as many risks as opportunities. We just don’t know yet. But I think it makes way more sense to explore what AI can do rather than simply ignore or reject it.