Scott Love worked in the industry, had an eye for data, and saw an opportunity to leverage his experience and strong relationship-building skills into a company of his own. Scott is yet another example that there’s room in the marketplace for service-based companies using existing technologies. Scott, the founder, and CEO of Lovelytics, is an alumnus of the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program who graduated in 2012 with a degree in Selling and Sales Management.  Lovelytics is a data analytics services firm focused on creating modern data environments, visualizations, and solutions through the use of tools such as Tableau, Databricks, Mapbox, and Salesforce. In short, they synthesize complex data into understandable mashups that simplify information. Located in Arlington, VA, and they currently have 36 employees and 400+ clients and partners. Last year, they were fortunate to win Tableau’s Rising Star Partner of the Year for 2020 and Washington Business Journal’s Best Places to Work. 

While at Purdue, Scott was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and was involved with College Mentors for Kids. Looking back on his time on campus, he now realizes the network he had at his fingertips. He wishes he had taken better advantage of all his Purdue connections and encourages current students to seek out clubs and ways to network because of the amazing number of resources available! Scott believes these personal connections are very important to his business. The Boilermaker connection still runs strong with him and his company today.  

Scott feels very fortunate the startup of his company has been very smooth. He acknowledges there were times during the COVID pandemic when the company had to get creative given the new stress, pressure, and constraints on companies and people alike including Lovelytics. They reached out to assist struggling clients and provided free services to help their clients survive. Scott did this in good faith believing their client relationship would hold strong and their future work would be fruitful.

Scott was inspired by an ENTR guest speaker, Scott Wise the founder of Scotty’s Brewhouse. Wise was very big on the idea of culture and family and shared that he always tried to keep people first because relationships were one of the most important assets to a company. Scott too strongly believes keeping people first and strong relationships are key to successful company culture and business as a whole. Additionally, he also believes that every employee should be entrepreneurial in the company. “One doesn’t need to be the CEO to be innovative.  What better person to lead a new initiative than the employee that shared the idea,” said Scott. Empowering employees and allowing innovative ideas to be pursued is essential to evolve as a company. Scott feels that if he values relationships within his company employee satisfaction and retention will remain high.  

Scott’s advice for students in the program, or recent alums, is to find something that you like or are good at and become passionate about it. If he could share words of wisdom with his younger self, he would tell him to take his small ideas and start a company because he would learn the business development process while bringing these smaller ideas to life. He also highlights the value of reaching out to your network and asking questions, while doing so. 

Scott remembers how valuable the guest speakers were to the ENTR classes. He appreciated that they shared their trials, tribulations, and expertise related to starting and owning their own company. He said many of their experiences could not be replicated in a textbook, and it was great to hear about their successes of the companies, as well as their struggles.  

Scott Love shared that he really enjoyed the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program because it fostered ideas that he truly cared about. To this day, Scott uses acquired skills from ENTR courses and creates a yearly business plan. The ENTR Program has made a positive impact on Scott and is a network in which he wants to remain involved and to keep those Boilermaker connections alive!