In This Issue: Partnerships in Education - Supporting Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Flathead Valley roundtable discussion with FVCC, TrustLab Inc hiring for jobs in the Flathead, TeraDact announces relaunch with new information security products

September 27, 2023, hosted by Glacier Bank

October 30, 2023

By Christina Henderson and Melissa Paulsen

The Montana High Tech Business Alliance traveled north to Whitefish on September 27, 2023, to host an afternoon roundtable discussion on entrepreneurship and innovation in the Flathead Valley with Alliance members and guests from Flathead Valley Community College (FVCC) at 101 Central Avenue. Michael Smith, Glacier Bank Kalispell Market President, and his colleagues provided gourmet appetizers and craft beverages from Herb & Omni and opened the lightning talks during the evening networking reception. The September reception marks the eighth event Glacier Bank has hosted on behalf of the Alliance since 2015.

CONNECT: Alliance Members Share Ideas to Foster Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Flathead Valley

Kalispell businessman Paul Wachholz generously donated $4 million to Flathead Valley Community College (FVCC) to create a Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Kalispell. Alliance members joined a select group of stakeholders including educators and students in the Flathead area to highlight local success stories and identify opportunities for growth during the roundtable “Partnerships in Education - Supporting Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Flathead Valley.”

Jane Karas, President of FVCC, gave the opening remarks before Alliance members and guests split into groups to share their insight on the various opportunities and challenges facing the Flathead’s entrepreneurial community. Christina Henderson, Executive Director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance, captured ideas shared and participants used stickers to vote for the highest priorities.

Key ideas that rose to the top for stakeholders:

Connections. (42 votes)

FVCC’s new entrepreneurship center could serve as a space to bring people together and facilitate connections between the community and the school. As a hub for mentorship, the center can provide access to successful entrepreneurs, peers, and needed skills and services.

Reaching students and youth. (27 votes)

“Hungry young folks” were cited as an asset in the Flathead community and participants agreed that the center should prioritize including young people in its programs and outreach. One of the major challenges spotlighted was the lack of information shared with high school students about the local workforce. Oliver Hartle, a student at Flathead High School, spoke about how he and his peers were unaware of the local high-tech companies and opportunities available to them. He also highlighted the need for more inclusivity when businesses share jobs and internships. Hartle recommended companies redirect their efforts to reach out to all students rather than focusing solely on the top 10% of the class.

Sustainability. (14 votes)

The group emphasized the importance of determining from the outset what success will look like, ensuring sustainable long-term funding, and creating a rigorous program that will challenge participants to build enduring companies.

Access to knowledge. (11 votes)

The center can offer exposure to new ideas and industries, and help aspiring entrepreneurs who don’t know who and what to ask.

FVCC. (10 votes)

FVCC is already a launching point for education and careers, so participants recommended building on great programs that already exist at the college. FVCC’s highly successful Running Start program, for example, provides high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to get an affordable start on their education by earning college credits while still in high school.

Business community. (9 votes)

Strong resources also exist in the Flathead Valley’s business community. The center could ask manufacturers to offer tours, send students to job shadow local professionals, or encourage work inside of local businesses.

Growth. (8 votes)

Stakeholders viewed the growing community as an opportunity. The influx of new people into the state can bring new ideas, businesses, energy, generous donations of money, and time given to mentoring.

PROMOTE: TrustLab Inc Raises $15M to Fight Harmful Internet Content

With over 15 years of experience managing global policy and operations teams for some of social media’s biggest players like YouTube and TikTok, Benji Loney, President of TrustLab Inc, understands the need to keep the internet safe and free from abusive content and bad actors.

Founded three and a half years ago, TrustLab Inc closed $15 Million in Series A funding in June 2022 led by U.S. Venture Partners.

Trust Lab Inc’s software helps remove hate speech, harassment, abuse, election interference, myths, and disinformation on the internet by measuring abuse areas across different platforms such as social media, online blogs, and websites. The program looks at the different actors and trends behind the abuse areas and uses the power of AI modeling to classify and compile those trends on a dashboard. The dashboard feature shows how much abusive content is available on one platform, the severity of the content based on different perspectives, and how much of the content is acted upon. TrustLab Inc provides its services to regulators, governments, and intelligence agencies, but also understands the challenges in regulating speech and aims to be as transparent as possible.

“There's often no one right way to balance freedom of expression and difficult content online,” Loney said. “We're right in the middle of that space, measuring for the regulators, informing the public discourse, and helping small and medium-sized platforms and technology companies be compliant with those regulations and take action.”

Loney said the company plans to hire a design director, a full-stack developer, a back-end developer, an AI/ML engineer, and various business development representative (BDR) roles soon.

ACCELERATE: Missoula-based TeraDact Relaunches and Introduces New Products to Protect Data for Governments and Corporations

Sean Molloy, Customer Success Director for Missoula-based TeraDact, shared how the AI/ML information security company rebuilt its team and developed new products over the past year.

“We've gone from taking the core engineer who developed the minimally viable product several years ago to a team of 12 people,” Molloy said. “We took some time over the course of the last year and rebuilt the product into three core technologies that have a growing number of different deployable applications and use cases.”

TeraDact is a full-spectrum data resilience partner for governments and enterprises. The company keeps corporate data safe–such as social security numbers, health information, birth dates, and more—through tokenization, redaction, and encryption.

In addition to launching a new corporate website, TeraDact also created a new workshop that allows users to interact with data sets and conduct data analytics while keeping the data protected through tokenization and other technologies. TeraDact also plans to develop working relationships with companies that heavily rely on data like banks, hospitals, healthcare institutions, pharmaceutical companies, telecommunications firms, and more.

“We’re excited because we’ve already got two big state governments as clients,” Molloy said. “More than 27 million people are having their data protected by us on a daily basis, so for a small Montana company with 12 full-time employees, we’re pretty proud of that.”

About the Publisher: Launched in 2014, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance is a nonpartisan nonprofit association of more than 200 high tech and manufacturing companies and affiliates creating high-paying jobs in Montana. For more information, visit MTHighTech.org or subscribe to our newsletter.

About the Authors: Christina Henderson has served as executive director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance since its launch in April 2014. She holds an English/Education degree from the University of Iowa and an MBA from the University of Montana.

Melissa Paulsen is the communications coordinator for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2022 with a BFA in creative writing and a minor in history.