Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame inducts its 2023 class

Some of the commonwealth’s most successful founders were recognized on Nov. 2 as three were inducted into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. The annual event also spotlighted four “Emerging Entrepreneurs."

The event, which was held at the Central Bank Center in Lexington, Kentucky, inducted the following entrepreneurs into the Hall of Fame:

A native of Louisville, Kirchdorfer began working at ISCO Industries Inc. in 1993 as a sales representative. He made his way up the ranks at the company, becoming its chairman and CEO in 2010.

In 2022, Kirchdorfer became part of an investment group that purchased the Valhalla Country Club. As a result, he is the general chair of the 2024 PGA Championship tournament. In 2004, Kirchdorfer was named the Entrepreneur of the Year for the Kentucky/Ohio region. In addition, he was named one of Louisville Business First's Most Admired CEOs in 2019.

Lamb is probably best known throughout the state — and the country — for Kona Ice. Founded in 2007, the flavored shaved ice truck franchise now has more than 1700 franchisee-owned trucks in 49 states and Canada, according to his biography listed on the hall of fame’s website.

Lamb, who is based out of Florence, Kentucky, later went on to startup the Travelin’ Tom’s Coffee Truck in 2020. That enterprise is expecting to have 150 franchised trucks by the end of the year with approximately 300 more in the works for 2024.

Salyers started Fabulous Furs — a Covington, Kentucky-based luxury line faux fur clothing products — with a faux fur sewing kit that she designed and build in her basement in the ’80s, according to her biography listed on the hall of fame’s website. Today Fabulous Furs' products are sold both online and through thousands of vendors, including hotels and upscale department stores, including Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

In addition, the “Emerging Entrepreneurs” recognized were:

For Forecastr’s Burchett and Plappert, this is the first time since the awards began in 2010 that two founders were both named as honorees in the same inductee class.

Louisville-based Forecastr, which was named one of our Startups to Watch in 2023, raised $4.5 million in fresh capital this year, as I reported in August. In addition, the business-to-business (B2B), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company was also named as one of five “One the Rise” category winners in our most recent KY Inno Fire Awards.

"That meant the world to Logan and myself," Plappert said via email. "We're a dynamic duo, like fire and ice, and we'd be nothing without each other. It's only fitting that we would accept this award together. We started this company together, and we're going to finish it together, too."

Hastings entered the state’s collective startup radar by founding Lexington-based insurtech startup Leadrilla in 2019. Within the same week of Leadrilla being recognized as one of our Startups to Watch in 2023, Hastings and team announced that it had both closed $3.95 million Series A round — led by Southern California-based Mucker Capital — and had started a spinoff company, SalesRiver, which would create a white-label product offering for insurance agencies.

Williams co-founded Cuddle Clones, a company that makes plush replicas of pets, in 2010. In 2022, we exclusively reported that the company had been acquired by Dianthus, an artificial intelligence (AI) e-commerce company. It should be noted that we also reported in March that Williams and her co-founder, Adam Greene, had filed a legal complaint against Dianthus, claiming tat they never were paid for their earned performance bonuses.

Williams is listed as a “Hustler & Tinkerer” at Louisville-based Working Title Labs, as well as a controller at OpsLayer, based out of Louisville, according to her LinkedIn profile.