Like other areas in the commonwealth, Paducah and its surrounding communities have been on a hot streak when it comes to attracting out-of-state founders to relocate their startups to Western Kentucky — HopFlyt comes to mind — but what about the homegrown startups?
On Thursday, Sept. 28, Sprocket will hold its inaugural TechXpo from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the 1857 Hotel & Event Center, located at 210 Kentucky Ave. in Paducah.
“I realized we had not done a lot of shouting out about the [startups] we have here. … It’s an opportunity for our local startups to demo their products. … We needed to also get them a platform,” said Monica Bilak, the executive director of Sprocket.
Bilak added that is inviting investors from across the state — and anyone else “who wants to know what's going on in West Kentucky.”
“This is a great time to get the word out,” she said. “Head over to Paducah and see what’s growing over here."
Bilak named around 12 startups that are scheduled to be at the event, all of which represent an array of industries.
Five of the founders who have relocated to Kentucky did so through an early-stage competition called 1ST50K, including one of the hottest startups in the state, freelance collaborative platform startup Feedcoyote.
The competition started out as a joint effort with Cape Girardeau, Missouri-based Codefi before Sprocket decided to start its own program with a new name, NEXT50K.
The launch of NEXT50K — with founders vying for $50,000 in funding — will begin in early October (the exact date is still to be announced). The event’s demo day will take place some time in the spring. One new detail is that the competition will be health care-focused for the foreseeable future.
Sprocket, which opened its offices in 2021, is affiliated with GroWest, one of six innovation hubs located throughout Kentucky that are part of the system of KY Innovation, the entrepreneurial arm of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.
The other five KY Innovation hubs are: Amplify Louisville; Awesome, Inc. (Lexington); Blue North (Covington); Central Region Ecosystem for Arts, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CREATE, Bowling Green) and Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR, Pikeville).
