August 23, 2018 Newsletter

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Montana High Tech News

Protecting Your Assets

PayneWest Insurance carries its legendary commitment to personal service into a digital age

By Katy Spence

On Christmas Eve last year, Keith Schnider, a PayneWest Commercial Insurance Agent, got a call anyone would dread. One of his clients, Ron Harmon, owner of Big Equipment in Havre, was alerted to a fire on his property. Schnider dropped everything and set off from his home in Great Falls in an icy storm to make the two-hour drive to Havre. Schnider arrived to the scene first, just a little before midnight.

The building was engulfed in flames, a total loss.

Schnider accompanied Harmon and his wife to their home after they arrived, working into the early hours of Christmas morning, explaining coverage and next steps for Big Equipment.

Within two weeks, Harmon received his claim check covering the loss. In a letter to PayneWest following the experience, Harmon wrote that he wanted his company to emulate the same values that he felt working with Schnider and PayneWest.

PayneWest traces its roots back to 1921, to a small office in Billings called Hoiness LaBar Insurance. Over the next century, a combination of organic growth, mergers, and acquisitions changed the insurance landscape in Montana.

Terry Payne has been the driving force behind a lot of PayneWest’s formation. In 1972, he formed Terry Payne & Co., which merged with Hoiness LaBar and Montana International Insurance, based in Helena, in 2001 to form Payne Financial Group (PFG). A 2012 acquisition of Western States Insurance led to what is PayneWest Insurance today: the largest privately-owned insurance agency in the Northwest,and a top-40 nationally-ranked firm.

Payne, who lives in Missoula, is the chairman of the board for PayneWest and was inducted into the Montana Business Hall of Fame in Billings in 2016. When PFG was formed in 2001, Payne and his team established a mission value statement which still guides the business today: Clients, Colleagues, and Communities.

Read the Story

From the Executive Director:
Surprising New Data Highlights Complexity of Gender Gap in Tech

Commenters on social media pointed out the lack of women around Monday's roundtable discussion between Congressman Greg Gianforte and local tech leaders. It's not a question of why women weren't invited-- it's a question of why the women who were invited didn't show up. Photo via Martin Kidston/Missoula Current

By Christina Henderson

“Men and women accepted our invitations at drastically different rates. Men said yes about 52 percent of the time. Women only said yes about 15 percent of the time. For around 27 percent of the invitations we extended to a woman, a man was sent in her place. When we invited a man, there was never an instance where a woman took his place at the table. In the end, only about 8 percent of the leaders attending the executive roundtables were female.”

One of the benefits the Montana High Tech Business Alliance provides to our members is access to high-impact opportunities: referrals to news media looking for interviews; offers to speak as thought leaders on panels or podcasts; or, as has often been the case recently, invitations to VIP roundtable discussions with powerful decision-makers.

In the last six months, the Alliance has been asked to organize three such roundtables with founders and C-suite executives of Montana high-tech and manufacturing firms. In April, we hosted a discussion with Senator Jon Tester and high-growth tech companies in Missoula. Earlier this week, we set up a similar meeting with Congressman Greg Gianforte and tech leaders in Missoula. And we’ve just finalized the guest list for a roundtable with Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, September 5 in Bozeman.

These events provide unique forums for tech leaders to share their business concerns with national policy-makers whose decisions can positively impact their business. The discussions have, in some cases, led to multiple news stories, amplifying these concerns to a state and national audience. The roundtables have the secondary benefit of introducing founders and executives to their peers, prompting invitations to go have a beer together and talk shop.

Despite all the good that comes from these VIP meetings, this week we faced a difficult reality – hardly any women are attending. Besides female staff for the Alliance and elected leaders, head counts for women executives have been depressingly low, with one or no women seated at the table.

Commenters on social media rightly spoke up about the gender disparity this week when viewing photos taken by journalists. I received a phone call from one frustrated executive who attended and saw a room that was not representative of the makeup and values of our Montana tech community, the Alliance, or his company.

Alliance staff members share this frustration, doubly so because we arrived at this outcome after intentionally trying to make sure women were present. In all cases, the officials requesting the meetings asked us to bring diverse perspectives to the roundtables, including those of female executives. The Alliance has addressed the issue of gender equity in the news media, promoted inclusive innovation, and recently announced that 50 percent of the Alliance’s six Board of Directors members are female.

So how, I asked, did we end up with roundtables with so few women? Did we not invite enough women to begin with? Were women as likely as men to accept the invitations? I crunched the numbers for the three VIP events. What I found shocked me.

In order to form our VIP guest lists, we typically turn to firms that have been named to the Alliance’s Montana Top Tech Employers or Companies to Watch lists. This is a pool of 60 companies, and around 30 percent of them have a female co-founder or top leader. These top-performing Montana companies are nearly twice as likely to have a female executive at the top, as just 18 percent of our member companies overall have women leaders.

When planning VIP events, my rule of thumb is that about 50 percent of the executives we invite will accept, and this turned out to be accurate. The Alliance extended 58 invitations, and we had 28 RSVPs. Around 26 percent of the leaders we invited were women.

Men and women accepted our invitations at drastically different rates. Men said yes about 52 percent of the time. Women only said yes about 15 percent of the time. For around 27 percent of the invitations we extended to a woman, a man took her place. When we invited a man, there was never an instance where a woman took his place at the table. In the end, only about 8 percent of the leaders attending the executive roundtables were female.

I cannot say for certain what conscious or unconscious decisions are leading to this gender disparity, or whether our events are inadvertently unappealing to women. But I hope by bringing it to the attention of our community, we can work together to do something about it.

Here are three ways we can bring more female executives to the table:

1. Leaders, insist on women being present.
Whatever statistical headwinds we might face, the Alliance and our partners must make it an imperative that roundtables, panels, and boards will include women, without exception. I am glad I received a call saying, “This is not acceptable.” Accountability is key to change. Nationwide, movements are calling on leaders to Say No to Man Panels and pledge that at public conferences they won’t serve on a panel of two people or more unless there is at least one woman on the panel, not including the Chair. We can hold ourselves to a similar standard in Montana.

2. Women, say yes more.
While certainly there are unavoidable reasons to decline an invitation, women might consider whether they can say yes more often. As female executives, their presence brings a unique and necessary point of view to the discussion and ensures that the diverse perspectives of Montana’s tech community are accurately represented. While male leaders may serve as capable representatives of your company, they are not a replacement for a female leader.

3. Men, nudge women to participate.
Male leaders could encourage women to come to the table more often. They might:

send a female co-founder or executive to represent the company
push back a bit if a female leader asks him to attend in her place, or
call up female peers at local tech companies to encourage them to show up.

I welcome your feedback and ideas on how we can solve this problem together. Contact Christina Henderson, Executive Director at director@mthightech.org or 406-552-9157.

Member News:

Five Alliance members named to 2018 Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies

Thirteen Montana companies made the 2018 Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies, including five Alliance members.

XY Planning Network, founded in 2014 in Bozeman, saw 2,571% growth over three years.

CLEARAS Water Recovery made the list for the second year in a row, coming in last year at 791 and this year at 216. CLEARAS saw 2,146% growth over three years.

Elixiter made the list for the third consecutive year, coming in at 2094 this year after seeing 212% growth.

Foundant Technologies made the list for the fifth consecutive year, this year at 3098 having garnered $7.3 million in revenue last year.

Advanced Electronic Designs made the list at 4900. AED was founded in 1994 and was featured in our Top Tech Employers 2018 list.

View the Montana companies on the 2018 Inc 5000 list.

Synesis7 named co-winner of $47 million defense contract, plans to double workforce

The sign for data-conversion company Synesis7 is pictured here inside business headquarters at 220 N. Alaska St. in Uptown Butte. Photo via Montana Standard.

By Annie Pentilla

Synesis7 Corp. may soon have to install new desks at its office on North Alaska Street in Uptown Butte.

That’s because the company will see around 25 new employees come through its doors in the months ahead thanks to a four-year, $47 million contract that the U.S. Department of Defense recently awarded to the company and to ManTech International Corp., a Virginia-based company collaborating with Synesis7.

As per the award, the companies will provide technical support for the U.S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command’s H-53 Heavy Lift Helicopter and collaborating programs.

Synesis7 on Monday announced the award, which is with the DOD’s Information Analysis Center and is called a Defense Systems Technical Area Task Multi-Award Contract.

Company founder and Chief Executive Officer Allen Ellmaker told The Montana Standard by phone that the contract is the largest that Synesis7 has ever been part of in the company’s nearly 18-year history.

The company currently has around 25 employees, but to meet the demands of the contract “we believe in a year we’ll at least double that,” Ellmaker said.

From there, the CEO projects the company will grow consistently year over year, noting that Synesis7 could have similar contracts come down the pipeline that are currently “percolating,” he said.

Hiring is already underway at Synesis7, according to Ellmaker. The company has been looking for people from Butte and the surrounding areas for data service positions and has taken on a handful of Montana Tech students as part-time summer employees and interns. But hiring is expected to ramp up in earnest around the end of 2018.

Read the full story in the Montana Standard.

Spectrum Launches Spectrum Internet^® Gig and Spectrum Business^® Internet Gig in Helena

HELENA, Mont. (August 9, 2018) – Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) today announced the launch of Spectrum Internet Gig for residential customers and Spectrum Business Internet Gig for small and medium-sized business clients in Helena featuring the deployment of DOCSIS 3.1 internet services delivering a 1 Gbps connection to the home or business.

Spectrum is fully committed to bringing faster internet speeds to the communities it serves with no modem fees or data caps. Priced at $104.99 per month for new residential customers, Spectrum Internet Gig is now available to more than 70 percent of the company’s footprint, and will be available throughout virtually all of Spectrum’s 41-state service area by the end of 2018. For more information on Spectrum’s full suite of advanced broadband services, please visit www.spectrum.com.

Read the full press release.

GTUIT recognized in the Hess Corporation 2017 Corporate Sustainability Report

Billings, Montana, USA - GTUIT®, LLC announced that Hess Corporation publicly recognized the ongoing natural gas liquid (NGL) extraction partnership between the two firms. The recognition came in the Hess Corporation 2017 Corporate Sustainability Report.

Hess and GTUIT have been working together since 2013 with GTUIT designing, manufacturing and operating well site gas capture and NGL extraction equipment at Hess locations in North Dakota.

Click here to view the full announcement and the excerpt from page 43 of Hess' most recent Sustainability Report mentioning the Hess and GTUIT partnership.

iConnect Montana is supporting Montana entrepreneurs

iConnect Montana, a Billings-based high tech company founded by three rural Montana cooperatives, is proud to announce 12 months of cloud service credits (a value worth up to $250/month) for Montana startups, non-profits, and students. These cloud credits are to be used for personalized cloud options that are flexible, scalable, secure, and provided right here in Big Sky Country.

“Montana is gaining a growing reputation as an ideal place for colocation and cloud operations as well as other high tech businesses,” said Mike Sheard, CEO of iConnect. “We want to be at the forefront of supporting these innovative companies from the beginning.”

Read the full release.

Entrepreneurship in Montana

Julia Quigley is producing videos promoting business in Montana. Check out her channel, which features interviews with Pat LaPointe, Director of Frontier Angels, and Will Price, Managing Partner of Next Frontier Capital.

Montana High Tech Business Alliance, Montana Chamber of Commerce: Report: Montana ranks 9th in US for new business survival rate (Missoulian)

Montana High Tech Business Alliance, ATG, WGM Group, Orbital Shift, TOMIS, LMG Security, Innimune, Big Sky Fulfillment, Prime Labs: Tax reform, health care and online taxes top Missoula tech leaders’ talk with Gianforte (Missoula Current), Montana Tech Execs Talk Hiring Challenges (MTPR), Hiring demand, health care costs chief concerns of high-tech leaders (Missoulian), Gianforte’s teleworking bill eyes rural workers, extends federal pilot program (Missoula Current)

Montana High Tech Business Alliance, AT&T, Blackfoot, ATG, EDULOG, WGM Group, LumenAd, Satic USA, TOMIS, DermaXon, GeoFli, Inimmune: Legislators advance harassment policy; EPA considers asbestos, handmade goods at fair; long lines to register vehicles; growing high-tech hub (Missoulian)

NorthWestern Energy, Montana Chamber of Commerce: Montana is good at producing entrepreneurs, but growth among startups is weak, expert says (Montana Standard)

Big Sky Economic Development: 20 years of Government Contracting Assistance to Montana Companies (Big Sky Economic Development)

LC Staffing: Climbing the Company Ladder (Flathead Beacon)

Montana Department of Commerce: Gazette opinion: Montana’s tool for job creators (Billings Gazette)

Montana Code School: The language of software and why you need to learn it (KULR8)

Big Sky Fulfillment: Montana’s online retailers must start collecting sales taxes for Washington; other states to follow (Missoula Current)

Bitcoin in the Flathead: Building the Virtual Gold Rush (Flathead Beacon)

Missoula: The best towns and small cities in the US: Missoula, Montana (The Guardian)

Montana employment: State economist breaks down pros, cons of Montana’s low unemployment rate (Missoula Current)

Rural broadband: FCC’s focus on 5G for major metros could leave rural American behind, Tester fears (Missoula Current)

Welcome New Members:

Artichoke Consulting, Peet McKinney, Missoula

Reflex Protect, Joe Anderson, Missoula

XY Planning Network, Alan Moore, Bozeman

Upcoming Events:

Big Sky Code Academy Full and Part Time Digital Marketing Classes - Billings, Bozeman, Missoula. Part-time course start Sept. 4. Learn Full Stack JavaScript and become a Web Developer in just 12 Weeks! In person and online options. Learn more and register here.

1 Million Cups Monthly Meeting - Bozeman. September 5. Meets the first Wednesday of the month at 7:30 am at Red Tractor Pizza, Bozeman. Creating conversation around Bozeman startups, business development, and economic growth in the most entrepreneurial state in the nation (plus, coffee). For more information and application to present, visit the website.

Town Hall with Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari - Bozeman. Sept. 5, 2:00-3:00pm, MSU, Ballroom A, 211 Strand Union Building, 751 Grant St., Bozeman. President Kashkari is a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body of the Federal Reserve System that sets national monetary policy. Since taking over as President of the Minneapolis Fed in January 2016, he has spearheaded several new initiatives, including releasing a plan to end the "Too Big to Fail" problem and launching the Federal Reserve's new Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute, housed at the Minneapolis Fed. President Kashkari will give brief remarks, followed by an open-mic Q&A with the audience moderated by Larry Simkins, President & CEO of The Washington Companies. Learn more and register.

Montana Tech Career Fair - Butte. Sept. 13, Career Fair. Sept. 14, 2nd day interviews. Take part in one of Montana Tech's signature events. For more information, email careerservices@mtech.edu, call 406.496.4140, or visit the website.

Project Everest: Agile Strategies in Leadership and Time Management with Alan Mallory - Missoula. Sept. 14, 8:30am. Salvation Army, Missoula. Learn tips, strategies, tools and other engaging content relating to human performance, leadership and adventure. Alan Mallory helps develop great leaders and strengthen teams by establishing and reinforcing the professional development skills and mindsets that are essential for success. His engaging presentations and interactive training programs help individuals and organizations reach new heights in the way we think and the actions we take in order to achieve breakthrough performance. Learn more and register.

Project Management Certification Boot Camp - Helena. Sept 17-20, Helena Hotel, 22 North Last Chance Gulch, Helena, Montana, 5960. The Montana Chapter of the Project Management Institute, Inc. (PMI)® is sponsoring a 4-Day Boot Camp presented by industry-leading Project Management Expert Steve Norton, PMP and PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.)®. Steve Norton’s Boot Camp will prepare you to take the PMP® / CAPM® exams and earn the prestigious PMI® certifications. Learn more and register here.

Big Sky Code Academy Full and Part Time Coding Classes - Billings, Bozeman, Missoula. Full-time classes start Sept. 17. Part-time courses start Oct. 1. Learn Full Stack JavaScript and become a Web Developer in just 12 Weeks! In person and online options. Scholarships Available. Accept GI Bill for tuition payment. Job Offer Guarantee. Learn more and register here.

Montana Code School Courses - Missoula & Bozeman. Full-Time Course Class Dates: Sept. 17 – Dec. 7, 2018. Part-time course dates: Sept. 18, 2018 – March 26, 2019. Financing available. Montana Code School’s full-time immersive program gives you the skills and fundamentals you need to land a job as a full-stack Jr. Web Developer. Contact 406-219-1392 or talk@montanacodeschool.com. Learn more here.

Leadership Training Workshop - Missoula. Sept.19, 2018, First Interstate Bank Training Center, downtown Missoula. The workshop presenters, industry leaders with the Western Montana Manufacturing Partnership (WMMP), will teach participants tools and skills to help improve their business and become better equipped for the challenges faced as supervisors and managers. Learn more and register.

Early Stage MT statewide showcase - Bozeman. Sept. 22, Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman. From each regional ESMT competition, two finalists were selected to advance to the Statewide showcase taking place on September 22, 2018 in Bozeman. There, competitors will have the opportunity to pitch their business to dozens of investors, mentors, and members of the Montana business community and possibly win your share of up to $50,000 in investment capital. Learn more here.

MSU 31st Annual Fall Career Fair - Bozeman. Oct. 4. Learn more and register.

2018 Montana Manufacturing Jobs Summit - Kalispell. Nov. 8-9, Hilton Garden Inn Kalispell. Montana is the fastest growing state for manufacturing GDP in the nation with $3.2 billion in manufacturing GDP in 2016— a $1.2 billion increase from 2011. From high-tech production of parts for Boeing’s newest planes to Montana’s local microbreweries producing high-quality beers, the Treasure State is home to thousands of manufacturing jobs across numerous sectors. The Summit will bring together state and national leaders in manufacturing, trade, and economic policy to highlight Montana’s booming manufacturing industry and share ideas about how to grow economic opportunities in the state. More details to come on the website.

Past Newsletters:

08/09/2018 - Startups Complete Early Stage MT HyperAccelerator; K-12 Computer Science in Montana; Big Sky Commerce turns 15; Bozeman Fiber expands services

07/26/2018 - Photos: July 5 Member Reception; Top Tech Employers media coverage; Quiq partners with Apple; Next Frontier announces first exit; IT apprenticeships

07/12/2018 - Montana Top Tech Employers 2018; Alliance hits 350 member milestone; Workiva CTO Jeff Trom as new board chair; IronCore receives $1.5M in seed funding

06/28/2018 - Robot Snacks chosen ESMT finalist; New MHTBA jobs board and calendar; Zoot names new President; Big Sky Dreamin' Salesforce conference

Click to view more past newsletters.

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Montana High Tech Business Alliance

1121 E Broadway St, Suite 108

Missoula, MT 59802

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Montana High Tech Business Alliance · 1121 E Broadway St, Suite 108 · Missoula, MT 59802 · USA