Matthew Crowley
(Photo Credit: Matthew Crowley)
Name: Matt Crowley
Current Job: Co-Founder & CEO of Signal Cortex
Favorite restaurant in town? Li Wah. Can’t beat the dim sum and the chicken & salted fish fried rice!
Favorite thing about Cleveland? The Metroparks. Such an amazing and necessary resource that keeps us connected to nature, and a great place to go while social distancing!
Q: Matt, you definitely have one of the more diverse backgrounds of people I've spoken to. You've worked as a consultant, in government, Fortune 500s and now as a founder. Was that intentional or more of a natural evolution in your career? I always intended to start a software company, but how I got here was definitely a natural evolution with a lot of unexpected opportunities. I took a job at Microsoft after graduating from Case and was lucky enough to ride out the financial crisis in relative security. I realized that the large corporate world really wasn’t making me happy, so I took some time off to write a book and join a startup as their CTO, which was an indispensable learning opportunity in building a B2B company. After that, the CIO job at Cleveland Hopkins opened up where I had a chance to be on the implementation and procurement side of things. Loved the airport space so much that I stayed in it as the CIO for Philadelphia International Airport and as the owner of an aviation cybersecurity company. Once the pandemic started kicking in and the bottom fell out of the travel industry, I (like many others) used it as a chance to finally follow my dream.
Q: You are now the founder of Signal Cortex, what led you to start it? Bill Wichert (our co-founder and COO) and I were working at airports and saw a huge disconnect between the frontline staff and management. There was a constant struggle between the staff trying to do their work and the managers trying to get better metrics to measure performance. In the end, the managers implemented more technology and business processes, which caused the workers to spend less time doing their job and more time doing paperwork. It was a vicious cycle. We wanted to fix these issues across all industries by creating a system where the employees could focus on their job and minimize their paperwork, but still provide the managers the clear and actionable data they needed to improve performance, increase revenue, and reduce costs.
Q: Your company was accepted to TechStars, what has that experience been like? The experience at Techstars has been phenomenal. Like many accelerators it has great programming opportunities, but their huge global network of tech leaders and mentors sets it apart from the rest. One of the core values of the program is to give first: all members commit to helping other entrepreneurs with no strings attached and ending the common practice of connections as a commodity (a practice that I am now promoting to everyone). The cohort experience is also invaluable, especially during COVID: for three months, we spend every single day (on Zoom) with 9 other companies, going through all of our ups and downs together. No matter what happens with the company, I’ve made some lifelong friends through the process.
Q: You decided to stay in Cleveland to start your company. Obviously, Cleveland like most cities has its pros and cons. What have been some of the benefits of starting here and the drawbacks? Well, I am pretty biased considering my co-founder and I are from Cleveland, but putting that aside it has most of the resources a business needs to start off on the right foot. Dynamics in our regional economy help keep fixed costs low, we have wonderful universities supplying a great talent pipeline, and we’re in close proximity to the other cities we are targeting for our business. Plus, the global shift to remote work has completely upended remaining talent acquisition problems that existed only a year ago. There are a lot of great early stage startup groups in CLE (Bounce, UARF, LaunchNET, JumpStart, YBI, and many more) and mentors (shoutout to Bob Sopko and James Hilton) that have been so important to us. Pre-seed and seed investment options in Cleveland (and much of the Midwest) are somewhat limited. That said, I think the move to remote is only going to improve that situation as it allows Cleveland-based companies to include traditionally regional investors & syndicates outside of the Midwest in their pipelines.
Q: Once COVID ends, what is the first vacation you have planned and why? 2020 has been a complete dumpster fire and I can’t wait for both it and the pandemic to be over. Aside from hosting a mask-burning bonfire fueled by hand sanitizer… I will be camping and hiking in Tobermory, ON with my wife Rachel and son Oren. We have gone every year for the last decade (except for this year) to escape the everyday and enjoy the poutine. Most importantly, I use that time to turn off my phone and completely disconnect. After working from home almost all year and blurring the traditionally clear line between the two, I really need that time to separate myself from work.