Three months ago, Main Street Ventures announced a new program aimed at encouraging student-led startups. Dubbed Launch It: Cincy, the program will cover summer expenses so budding entrepreneurs can focus on growing their companies locally. The program is banking on Cincinnati’s ability to build and retain talent, as one of the strongest metrics for measuring a startup ecosystem is its breadth of young innovators.
In that spirit, Cincy Inno accepted nominations from other founders, investors, startup members and enthusiasts and ultimately selected five entrepreneurs under the age of 25 who we believe are worth watching. Their fledgling companies and big ideas have the potential needed to become the next power players in the city’s startup space.
Isaiah Kelly, Smoove Creations
If there was one experience that proved most formidable to Isaiah Kelly’s early entrepreneurial career, it might be the summer he spent working at a shoe store before heading off to college.
Prior to the gig, he had little interest in fashion. He left the job a full-fledged sneakerhead — a passion that’s since morphed into Smoove Creations.
Smoove, a custom shoe and apparel company, has evolved from a hobby painting shoes into a full-fledged business venture. At Northern Kentucky University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and is finishing his master’s, Kelly is arguably the school’s most decorated founder.
He’s a two-time winner of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s Cincinnati regional competition, a designation that sent him to Silicon Valley to compete against his peers last February. In October, Smoove took second place at KY Pitch, an annual statewide innovation competition, and in March, he earned a bid to participate in the Rice Business Plan Competition hosted by Rice University, considered the “Super Bowl” of pitch competitions.
Kelly acknowledges he’s received a lot of help from within the local ecosystem. “Handling the business and school, it’s been a grind,” he said. “Everyone has been so willing to help, whether that’s working on our pitch, or (offering) feedback on general business operations. The cool thing about the MBA, I can take a lot of things I’ve learned and apply them in real time.”
Early on, Smoove catered largely to one-off clients — World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Brian Cage and Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Preston Brown have commissioned custom shoes. But the company is increasingly playing in the B2B space, partly a credit to Kelly’s recent graduation from gBeta Cincy’s summer 2021 cohort, which ended in July.
He’s also seeking investment to scale that sector of business. Prior to the accelerator program, Kelly wasn’t big on the idea of raising venture capital, but funding would help the company get more traction. “Investors have reached out and are interested,” he said.
Over its short lifetime, Smoove Creations has generated more than $54,000 in revenue and serves more than a dozen corporate clients including St. Elizabeth Healthcare, Citig and Pacaso, a “unicorn” second-home startup with a heavy Cincinnati focus. Pacaso is led by former Dotloop founder and Queen City native Austin Allison.
“Over 50% of our sales have been with different corporate clients, and every single one of those is looking for unique ways to reward and promote their employees,” Kelly said. “There’s a synergy between employee incentives, especially with what’s been going on during the Covid-19 pandemic. And that’s a space where we really want to create.”
As the custom-sneaker market grows, Smoove Creations has a strong plan in place to scale the business, said Zac Strobl, assistant director for the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at NKU. Smoove recently developed software that allows individuals to design their own shoes, which has increased operational efficiency. Additionally, the startup expects to expand product lines while staying true to its brand.
“He wants to be a role model for the next generation of entrepreneurs, especially for African American kids,” Strobl said. “Isaiah has a willingness to take on new tasks, to work hard in the classroom and to strive toward creating a business that will change the world — and he is well on his way.”
Angela Hatcher, P&G Ventures
Growing up, Angela Hatcher always had big-city aspirations. When it came time to apply for colleges, the Chicago native envisioned herself at a place like NYU or USC. She worked hard and got accepted everywhere she applied. But somehow, she ended up at Miami, in rural Oxford. “I applied there on a bit of a whim,” she said. “It’s where my dad’s dad went to school. It was also the only place I got into next to free. Saying yes to no college debt was a no-brainer.”
It’s a decision that proved formative. While at Miami, Hatcher tested the waters, logged one internship after another — nine by the time she reached her senior year — and often put in 30-hour workweeks on top of her class load. It wasn’t the stereotypical collegiate experience. But she has no regrets, she said.
“I had one on-campus job as a resident assistant, and I was thinking to myself, if I’m going to invest this much time into working, I want it to be work that’s going to accelerate my career,” Hatcher said. “It was lonely. But it’s just who I am. It’s in my nature to always have a full plate.”
Her impressive resume earned her a full-time job at Procter & Gamble post-graduation. She spent the last two years working on Oral Care Ventures, an internal startup studio within P&G tasked with building out new ideas specific to the company’s oral care business, which includes juggernauts Crest and Oral-B.
In July, she transitioned to P&G Ventures, another internal startup studio, but one on the hunt for P&G’s next billion-dollar brand. P&G Ventures tests ideas in spaces where P&G doesn’t currently compete, like personal performance, women’s wellness, aging and sleep.
At P&G Ventures, Hatcher is part of a three-person team. Each member acts as a co-founder of a project. The group handles rapid experimentation, tests new business ideas, researches consumer problems, performs market analysis and more.
Her signature red glasses? Like a true P&Ger, those too have become a kind of personal branding strategy. She grew frustrated during early internship interviews when people couldn’t remember her name. “I was talking about it with my dad, and he said, ‘You control your identity and how people perceive you.’ As a brand builder, that’s even more true today.”
Long term, Hatcher aspires to rise to one of P&G’s top spots, that of chief marketing officer: a Marc Pritchard 2.0. But she also wants to venture outside the corporate confines and start her own company, likely in the CPG, or consumer packaged goods, space. There’s something about testing the waters as a founder that’s unequivocally appealing to her. It’s like a box left unchecked on a career-spanning bucket list. If that startup idea succeeds, in the most perfect world, P&G would acquire it one day. “It would be serendipitous,” she said. “Something that you couldn’t even write in a movie.”
Tsavo Knott, Pieces
For the past year, Tsavo Knott and the team at Pieces, an Over-the-Rhine-based software startup, have been heads down hard at work. In the company’s first year, they’ve built out their product, quietly raised millions in venture capital and assembled an employee base that now spans the globe. Pieces, Knott said, is finally ready to emerge.
For the 24-year-old St. Xavier High School and Miami University grad, getting to this point is the result of many long workweeks and missed family vacations. That’s been his work ethic for years, he said. “There’s nothing that will stop me,” he said. “It’s about building a company and finding really ambitious young people who believe anything is possible and are excited about solving really hard problems.”
Pieces, in its own right, is tackling something truly difficult. Knott categorizes the company as “deep tech.” Its productivity platform, a first-of-its-kind, will enable the saving and sharing of file fragments (think one hi-hat note out of an entire song), or one small piece out of an overall project. The idea is to move faster while improving search, sharing and overall workflow needs. Pieces is releasing its initial go-to-market product this fall for developers, allowing professional creators to save and store code, links, text, images and more with a simple copy and paste.
Other markets will follow.
“If you took a Google slide and (copied) it and pasted it somewhere in Slack, it’s reduced down to an image. That image is useless,” Knott said. “You’re not going to get the layers; you’re not going to be able to edit the text. With Pieces, when you take that Google slide and send it to someone, and they take it and paste it back in, it’s still a Google slide.”
Pieces is already attracting heavy investor interest. Earlier this year, the company raised a significant round of seed funding from a Midwest-based venture capital firm, although Knott is keeping the amount under wraps for now. Union Hall is home, but Pieces already has team members based in San Francisco, Ireland, Spain, Poland and beyond.
The company currently employs about 24 people, including 16 full time. Almost all are fellow 20-somethings, including Pieces co-founder Mack Myers. Myers and Knott worked on a previous startup together in college, called MeshMyCampus, designed as a Slack for higher education. He said Knott brings a certain synergy to the table. “I’m here in Cincinnati because (Tsavo’s) here in Cincinnati,” Myers said. “It’s about being together.”
Elizabeth Shrout, Avasha
When 21-year-old Northern Kentucky University undergrad Elizabeth Shrout launched her clothing startup, Avasha, in January 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was already waiting in the wings.
While Shrout felt confident the company’s one-on-one personal styling could easily be taken virtual, her early technology didn’t adapt well. And as companies transitioned to remote work and stay-at-home orders shuttered bars and restaurants, the need for Avasha’s services declined.
Recognizing the need to recalibrate, Shrout pressed pause on Avasha’s app and pivoted to creating e-books with personal styling advice. Avasha also caught its first big break – entry into KY Pitch, an annual competition for student-led startups. In October, Shrout and co-founder Ally Creech walked away with third place in their category, the people’s choice award and more than $4,000. Shortly thereafter, Shrout had a late-night aha moment.
“If I want to innovate, then I have to not be working on it,” she said. Shrout also realized the potential for clients to book private Zoom appointments with stylists. “We canceled the e-books thing and focused on Zoom.”
Over the following weeks, 50 clients met virtually with Avasha stylists. Then, Shrout came up with her next pivot. “What if college students could get personal styling on the professional side, but on the university’s dime? It could be part of career services,” she said.
Shrout believes having university backers will give Avasha “scalability and security” as it grows. To further that goal, she used some of the KY Pitch money to hire a professional writer to help her craft an even more ambitious pitch and hopes to reach out to more than 200 universities in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. This spring, NKU purchased sessions as part of a trial run for its business week, something Shrout hopes the university will do again.
According to Shrout, the newest iteration of Avasha is designed for the long haul. “It’s not an income right now. And even if it does become profitable, I can’t take that much out because we need to invest in the company,” she said. But she’s found strength in her ability to pivot during difficult times and knows how to remain positive. “You have to shut those doubts down.”
Ben Corwin, AutoHive
Ben Corwin is a self-confessed car guy. The Nashville, Tenn., native and Miami University senior was buying and selling car parts at 16, and his latest company, AutoHive, builds on his experience within the auto sector.
AutoHive, which formally launched in April, is a peer-to-peer marketplace for enthusiasts to buy and sell car parts, streamlining a process Corwin says can often prove frustrating. “EBay doesn’t have accountability for the buyer,” he said. “From a seller experience, if this transaction goes bad, they’re left on the hook. (And) Facebook Marketplace is disorganized and localized.”
Corwin believes AutoHive offers users price transparency and marketing consistency. His company has participated in two recognizable local accelerator programs, gBeta Cincy and Miami’s RedHawk Launch Accelerator. Both are designed to help early-stage startups get off the ground.
Currently, AutoHive has more than 100 listings on its site, but Corwin has yet to land his first sale. “As of right now, it’s been kind of slow going, but everyone I’ve spoken to asks me why this hasn’t existed before,” he said.
Corwin hopes to bring on someone to manage the technology side of AutoHive’s business and would like to increase the company’s social media presence to build its brand reputation within the industry. But to do both those things, there’s something he needs — capital.
At this stage, the company is being funded by Corwin’s other business, an online consignment shop for vintage European car parts called Obscure Euro Parts. He’s been running that venture since 2018. However, his goal is to do at least a seed capital raise for AutoHive within the first half of 2022. By then, he will have graduated and can focus solely on the business, he said.
“In a year, I would like to have people joining and talking about it,” Corwin said. “Five years from now, I’d love to see the car community, as a whole, moving toward this platform where they can buy and sell.”
