Entrepreneurs make pitches for funding
By Jasmine Hall
Hundreds packed into the Center for the Arts theater Oct. 9 to hear innovative and creative business ideas come to life.
Silicon Couloir hosted its 13th annual Pitch Day for entrepreneurs in the mountain West, and five finalists took the stage. Four of the five were vying for three awards that could boost the trajectory of their businesses. The event also put the spotlight on them in the “entrepreneurial ecosystem” cultivated by the networking and business coaching nonprofit in Jackson.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” Rob Kellogg, executive director of Silicon Couloir, quoted before the presentations began.
The crowd sat through nearly two and half hours of pitches and listened intently to inform their vote for the Audience Choice Award. Attendees also learned what it took in the panelists’ eyes to earn a $20,000 investment for the most compelling business idea, best chance of success, highest likelihood of getting funding and strongest presentation.
Co-founder Zoë Worthen and her startup Uplink Robotics was selected for the largest prize, the Panelist Choice Award. She came onstage with a robot inspector the company builds in Laramie that is designed to go into tight spaces and unknown situations. “You are being inspected,” she said, as she picked up the remote-controlled vehicle.
“Our customers face dangerous and unknown situations, putting their lives at risk,” she said, explaining that the company largely is marketing to home inspectors, tradespeople, first responders and law enforcement. “However, with our inspection crawlers, our customers can take the unknown out of the situation, gather crucial information and ensure their safety.”
This year the group of University of Wyoming grads she founded the business with have generated $400,000 in revenue.
They have no plans to leave Wyoming but do have big plans to expand the market. Worthen said Uplink Robotics aims to eventually secure government contracts with the military and police departments. An example was using the robot to investigate a home in Sheridan where a suspect was hiding out, instead of destroying the home.
“But we also want to make a difference in our community by offering more STEM and engineering jobs in the state of Wyoming,” she said, referring to the acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. “We have restarted the 4-H Robotics Club in Laramie, sponsor senior design projects and offer internships to students at the university. We want to raise the barrier of tech in Wyoming while also educating and motivating the next generation of engineers and innovators.”
The other entrepreneurs who made their case for the awards to the panel of experts, both from Jackson and across the country, weren’t as far along as Uplink Robotics.
In Jackson, Ing founder Zach Rachlin is designing the world’s first adventure management platform, which would help execute and document outdoor trips. It would connect outdoor travel and guide companies and individual adventurers with tools to map out their trips, create packing lists and even purchase the right equipment in the future, all in the program.
He won the Audience Choice Award of $10,000, as well as a year of free use at the Cowork Space. The award is given to the entrepreneur who “wows” the crowd.
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“I think that’s probably reflective of the type of venture business that he had,” Kellogg said. “It’s outdoor rec, so a lot of the audience gets that.”
Novvacup founder Danielle Nicklas reimagined period health for those experiencing menstruation and wanted to create a collapsible menstrual cup that would “make things easier for women, their wallet and our planet.” Nicklas grew up in Jackson and earned her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
“Our design also has a connected containment system so that your user experience is spill free, mess free and ‘ick’ free,” she said. “These are all significant improvements over our competitors that are bulky, uncomfortable, difficult to put in and hard to take out, but we can do this at a competitive price point. We are still in development. You can see our prototype cup and packaging provided through our Johns Hopkins and University of Wyoming networks. Our product is about two years from launch.”
Nicklas won the Bob Arndt Community Caretaker Award, which is $5,000 cash, an invitation to join the Silicon Couloir TEAMS program and six months of free use at the Cowork Space. Her company was viewed as one that best embodies the core values and mission of Silicon Couloir.
The other two competitors who received coaching and left a mark on the audience were Synthwave founder Charles Stumpf and Snake River Biosciences co-founder Michael Edwards.
In the end, Kellogg said the overwhelming response he got was that this may have been “one of the better crops of entrepreneurs coming in.” They showed off their individuality, passion and unique approach to problems in the world.
But the executive director of Silicon Couloir said there’s a high likelihood that the first venture isn’t going to be the most successful. He said the organization’s goal is support founders and entrepreneurs on their entire journey.
“Whether it catalyzes in this venture or future ventures, the point is for us to support entrepreneurs to become better at what they do so they can de-risk their current business or learn and apply it to a future business,” Kellogg said.
As Pirate Ship co-founder Bjorn Borstelmann said at Pitch Night, it’s going to be scary and mistakes are going to be made. Pirate Ship, a Silicon Couloir venture, was one of the main sponsors of the event. Borstelmann said it was his eighth try at a business and it wasn’t smooth sailing at first.
But he said entrepreneurs have to stick through it.
“It feels like every failure that I made led me to where I am today,” he said.