Indiana Trailblazers Roundtable

David Lindsey is the CEO of Defender Direct.

It is easy to highlight the many positive attributes that Indiana offers for starting and growing a business, such as affordable wages, responsible work ethic, Midwestern values, etc.  However, an important element that we cannot lose track of is the simple lack of barriers to starting and growing a business in Indiana.  Indiana does not have heavy bureaucracy and/or licensing requirements, heavy business taxes, expensive office space, etc. This does much to create a business- friendly climate.  The state needs to continue on this path and continue to improve its efforts in the area of being pro-business.

Specifically, I am not sure that our business, Defender Direct, could have been started in a number of other states around the country due to their strict regulations.  It seems that many other states across America have great bureaucracy and "good old boy networks" that, in our case, prevent start ups from getting an alarm company license.  For example, it took our company two years to get a license to sell and install alarms in a major East coast state.  Two years!

Fortunately, it only took us two weeks in Indiana.  This allowed us to concentrate our efforts on building a business vs. fighting bureaucracy.  Today we are the largest ADT dealer in the nation, but if we had started our business in that particular East coast state, we may not have even chosen the alarm industry as a place to grow our business.