Ellie Symes is the CEO and Co-founder of The Bee Corp. The Bee Corp is a benefit corporation that uses hardware and data analytics to quantify and track the health of, you guessed it, bees. Ellie is incredibly pragmatic and with her team,  they have designed one of the simplest and best use cases for the internet of things that I have seen to date.

I remember being a sophomore in college and learning about the bee crisis and the importance and significance of bees in our society. As a younger self I had daydreamed about solving this issue and like many of my entrepreneurial daydreams, this faded into my classes and responsibilities. I was ecstatic to meet someone who did not let this dream slip away into the infinite, but got into the weeds saw an opportunity and seized it. Ellie is incredibly impressive, not just because of the accolades that she has been awarded, Ellie recently won the Rising Star award at the Mira Awards, but because of her tenacity to follow through. Ellie, in the early years of her startup, was also getting her masters from the SPEA school at IU.

What we talk about (Bees):

* Starting a company in college without dropping out.

* Bees are a mix between The Black Panther and Game of Thrones

* The Social and ethical life of bees

* The many mysteries of bees

* The Supplement industry for bees

* The Waggle Dance

* In February and March 3/4ths of the countries, hives will be shipped to California.

* Why she stayed in Indiana, as opposed to going to the coasts.

Quotes about Bees:

* "Queens will not sting humans, they will not attack other bees, queens will only attack other queens."

* "Male bees are just flying sperm"

* "We have a lot to learn from bees. They are amazing social creatures, how they communicate and work together is inspiring to explore"

* "They are incredibly collaborative."

* "Imagine if Humans didn't have miscommunication... how elevated we could be as a species."

* "Colony Collapse is one issue in an ecosystem of a bunch of issues contributing to hive loss."

* "We need data so we can make things to make food."

* "What we are really trying to do is help growers get more information about the hives that they rent."

* "This whole chain has been us getting better and better and listening to customers, learning about the market and figuring out information is actually going to help them."

* "I wasn't thinking about being an entrepreneur before starting this business."

* "You don't think twice when somebody that successful says, alright we want to help you start something."

* "Businesses aren't evil."

* "Every younger founder needs at least two or three mentors. You need more than one because it is so nice to hear different perspectives. It helps you listen to them, but also choose what path you want to set."

* "What I saw with technology, was how we didn't have any data in the industry,"

* "Indiana has been so helpful to The Bee Corp that I want to honor that and build this here"

You can find Ellie here:

www.thebeecorp.com

 

Thank you for listening to and learning about Indianapolis with me. If you are new here, check out some of our other shows. We had an amazing interview with Aman Brar founder of Canvas and was president of Apparatus as they went through a 34 Million dollar acquisition. If you want to learn about brewing beer and the importance of quality head to our