Software startups: Indiana entrepreneurs are ready to compete.

• Author: Hromadka, Erik
• Position: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

THERE ARE FEW industries where good ideas can develop into viable companies as quickly as those in computer software. Advances in technology have made it easy to link programming talent, hardware solutions and online distribution in a way that allows companies to ramp up very quickly.

However, with new opportunities come additional challenges and Indiana's software entrepreneurs today face a very competitive environment where they must have both the agility and foresight to bring new software to market to carve out their space before another company claims their niche.

The following Indiana companies are among those currently bringing such ideas to reality and preparing to compete in the world of information.

QTRAC

John Gibbs understands how volatile software companies can be. As a cofounder of Interactive Intelligence in Indianapolis, he experienced the ups and downs of the startup as it developed and licensed call center and enterprise software which is now used by more than 2,500 customers and generated $83 million in revenue last year.

So when Gibbs was introduced to Jennifer Summers, a nurse from Franklin who invented software that tracks patients in long-term healthcare facilities, he understood its potential to redefine that market and agreed to come out of retirement to serve as CEO of Qtrac and personally put up 70 percent of initial funding.

With an aging population that needs long-term care, a shortage of certified nursing assistants and required documentation of restorative care for insurance reimbursement, Gibbs saw great opportunity for Qtrac software. "I found that there was nothing on the market that could help with these things," he says.

Gibbs has a set of metrics that he uses to evaluate new ideas. Qtrac (www.qtracsoftware.com), which makes its home among 25 companies in the Indiana University Emerging Technologies Center in Indianapolis, scored well in that analysis.

"One of my questions is barrier to entry--how tough is it to get in this business?" he explains. On that point, it was helpful to have someone who had worked in the long-term-care industry and understood both the daily operations and also the need for good management tools. Gibbs says he was impressed that Qtrac was intuitive and easy to use and had also taken early steps to secure its intellectual property.

Another factor that made Qtrac attractive was government mandates for restorative care and subsequent fines for not meeting those numbers. Gibbs...