This is the third in a series of blogs featuring the Venture Club, written by Evening MBA student Kelci Dye.

Powderkeg hosted a great event called Powderkeg Pitch Night in March in the Salesforce building in downtown Indy.

Featured at the event were three business presentations with a question and answer session from a panel of advisors.

The three companies that presented were Covideo, WorkHere and DoubleMap. They were all local, tech-focused and fairly recent start-ups. All companies had already had great success and were looking to grow and hire more talent.

The advisors on the panel were seasoned players and investors in the venture community. They understood the environment in which these companies were participating, as well as the necessary elements to grow a successful startup.

Unlike the well-known TV show, these advisors were not there to tear apart the company and test the resolve of its leaders. The advisors asked very knowledgeable and forward-thinking questions to make sure the leaders were on track for moving forward.

My favorite presentation was Covideo.

Covideo is a company working to find an alternative to developing business through mass emails. Instead of a generic email sent out to a prospect list, Covideo has created a platform to record short videos that have a business development message. They found these videos are much more effective than a text-only email.

Covideo seems to be on the forefront of changing the way business development occurs.

This event was fantastic, and I would highly recommend it to anyone in the tech or start-up space.

So many people came together to make the event happen, and it was great to see all of the support for our local business rockstars. Events like these add so much value to my Kelley Evening MBA experience, because they allow me to broaden my horizons about the business opportunities available, especially here in the Indianapolis community.

Having an MBA will certainly open doors and create opportunities that would not have been available before, and getting involved in these events and in the Indianapolis venture community has had a compounding effect for the amount of opportunities I now realize are available. This is certainly an invaluable piece of my Kelley MBA.