“There’s no future of innovation that doesn’t include innovation in manufacturing,” says Yu Sunny Han, founder of Fulcrum, a cloud-based business software system that assists with planning, quoting, quality control, and inventory tracking. Launched in 2019, Fulcrum specifically targets the manufacturing industry, which isn’t known for early adoption; Han estimates that 12 million manufacturers are using outdated software. With a large wave of CEOs hitting retirement age and the next generation climbing the ranks, Han says interest in modernization is skyrocketing. Since last fall, Minneapolis-based Fulcrum has hired 20 new employees, mostly engineers, bringing its staff to 34. Han takes culture seriously: “We have a ‘no a—hole’ policy,” he says, “which rules out one in four people.” Fulcrum interviewed 1,400 people to find its next 20 hires and, in doing so, increased gender diversity from 19 percent to more than 40 percent women on the team. “We’re asking our team to take risks and be more creative,” Han says. “I can’t be the source of all ideas, and we can’t go off of what’s been done before.”

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