A total of $40,000 has been awarded to Kentucky college students with innovative ideas and businesses.
KY Pitch was held in person for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic at Base 249 in Lexington, Kentucky, late last month. Sixteen teams hailing from schools across the commonwealth competed for the chance to win funding to further their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Tasha Sams, executive director of the Governor's School for Entrepreneurs at KEENStart, told me the program has grown in both participation from colleges and universities, as well as the amount of capital awarded to the winning teams.
KEENStart is a Lexington-based nonprofit that offers educational opportunities and programs around entrepreneurship, design-thinking and innovation. The organization took over the former Idea State U Pitch Competition in 2019 and worked with state agency KY Innovation to get the college pitch program back on its feet.
"We raised our hand and said, 'This is an extraordinarily important opportunity for all college students in the state. We want to take this we want to run with it. We want to rebrand it, breath new life into it and really see what we can do,'" Sams said.
Students from 10 Kentucky colleges and universities participated in this year's competition, which was judged by Evan Knowles, co-founder and CEO of Symba, Lacresha Sewell, founder and CEO of Melanated Healthcare LLC, Megan Aanstoos, licensing and new ventures manager at Kentucky Commercialization Ventures, and Tonya Parsons, Kentucky Small Business Development Center Lexington director.
There are two tracks to the KY Pitch competition: developed and exploratory. The developed track is for startups that are already generating revenue, while the exploratory track is for idea-stage ventures.
ON Dogs, founded by Megan Burriss of Northern Kentucky University, won the $15,000 first place prize in the developed track. Her business offers 100% waterproof collars and leashes made from BioThane, a vegan leather, made from polyester webbing that is then coated in PVC or TPU making it durable, waterproof, fade proof, stink proof and antimicrobial.
"She just had outrageous success with it," Sams said. "When the judges were deciding which business was the most viable or which business would be able to use the funding in the best way, they settled on ON Dogs because she could very easily take that funding, buy X-amount of product and continue to grow her company pretty rapidly."
H20 Leak Pro won $5,000 for a first place win in the exploratory track. Founder Lauren Partin of Morehead State University had the idea for a small device attaches to the water line going into a person’s home allowing a standard average usage to be measured. In the event that usage is doubled, the water is then shut off in an effort to prevent residential water damage.
Second and third place prize winners were:
- Peachy + Vintage, founded by Caden Adams & Kayla Braden of Northern Kentucky University — $7,000 second place developed track;
- DXD Labs, founded by Castor Grande, Pollux Grande, Sean Gallagher, Ryan Gallagher and Nate Louk, representing Transylvania University, University of Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky University — $5,000 third place developed track;
- INdulgence, founded by Carrie Marie McCarty, Alexis Dahl Walls and Victoria Wilson of Eastern Kentucky University — $3,500 second place exploratory track;
- Play-It, founded by James Ambler of Murray State University — $1,500 third place exploratory track.
Other finalists were: Middle Man Productions LLC, Appalachian Hope Pharmacy, Thrifted Freckles, FAM, Style House by Brittany LLC, GymShare, Brown Sugar Bliss, EDUPark LLC, Frailey Designs and Berea College-Entrepreneurship for the Public Good.
