It is sort of the reason of the underdog.
You know, let's face it, we had been hearing that this is flyover territory.
Nothing interesting happens here.
Bullshit.
Absolutely does.
You know, people never see it coming.
I'm Joe Petzek.
I'm Andy Leikis.
I'm Ken Maxwell.
We're the co-founders of ProxyBit.
We decided to disrupt an industry that had really done things one way for thousands of years.
Here we go now, three and a half and now four.
I've got three and a half and now four.
Four to you, and you work four.
Thank you, now five.
Five, thank you.
In 2001, ProxyBit was started with four guys and now we're over 200 employees.
My name is Dana Kaufman.
I'm the director of communications at ProxyBit.
I'm Erin Keele, VP of sales at ProxyBit.
I started working for ProxyBit in 2004 for free.
I've worked here for 10 years.
So that was my unofficial start, but officially I started in November of 2006.
We've built a sophisticated piece of technology that allows us to broadcast auctions in real time.
This is a very family oriented and team oriented environment.
This is truly kind of a family type career for me and ProxyBit means the world to me.
I think the difference though really is in the environment and the spirit of startup and entrepreneurship.
People are actually excited about working the long hours or wearing several hats.
They don't mind it.
They embrace it.
I kind of equate it to having a child and at times that child makes you upset and you have some of the best experiences of your life with that child.
In one of the first auctions we ever conducted, we decided to sneak in some testing and mistakenly bid and we won a $50,000 dump truck.
Basically that purchase represented a large percentage of the money that we had available.
I'm Ryan Downs and I'm CEO of ProxyBit.
The one way that this company was really going to move forward at the pace that we needed to move forward was to bring in somebody that was a little more seasoned.
Well these young guys here in Omaha had created this really interesting business but none of them had really deep experience in scaling a business from startup to a later phase.
And I'd had a lot of that experience with eBay and PayPal.
Bringing someone with the experience that had been there and done that that could help us understand how to get from A to B more efficiently was probably the smartest thing we made in our own business.
The emerging tech startup scene in the Midwest is fantastic.
The tech startup scene in the Midwest has changed dramatically in the last decade.
Things are starting to come together.
I don't think that we would exist if we didn't actually start in Omaha in the West.
There's absolutely no reason you need to leave Omaha or the region to find awesome work at awesome companies.
There's capital here. There's technology expertise here. There's a supportive community here.
I love that there's more opportunity here in the Midwest. Not only great opportunity for those companies but it also helps attract more talent to the Omaha into the Midwest area.
I want young people to know that you can start and build amazing entrepreneurial companies right here when you live in Omaha and in this greater Midwest region.
I'm Dana Kaufman and that's my SPN startup story.
I'm Ryan Downs and that's my SPN startup story.
My name is Aaron Keele and that's my SPN startup story.
And that's our SPN startup story.
