A nonprofit startup designed to help those dealing with chronic illnesses has won the WBJ’s 2022 Inno Madness competition.
Co-Immunity, founded in 2020 by Madeline Shonka, beat out Lawn Buddy in the final round of reader voting to take home the crown.
Shonka began Co-Immunity after struggling to find the resources she felt she needed after being diagnosed with lupus and narcolepsy with cataplexy.
As the WBJ highlighted on Tuesday, Co-Immunity has been growing to start 2022 — including a network of patients on social media that Shonka says supported her business throughout the contest.
But Co-Immunity, she says, has become more than just a labor of love.
Helping others and seeing the community of patients grow around the platform, Shonka says, has also been therapeutic.
“I felt engulfed by all that was going on in my life. I was struggling to cope with my diagnosis,” she says. “Seeing Co-Immunity take off the way it has has given me a lot of hope. It’s been the most healing experience for me.”
The 2022 Inno Madness contest started early this month and allowed WBJ readers to vote in a bracket-style contest pitting local startups against each other.
You can read much more about the 16 companies chosen to participate in this year’s contest in our introduction to Inno Madness.
The contest was meant to spotlight growing startups in Wichita and not meant as an all-inclusive list of the young companies with the most going on locally.
You can to stay caught up with all things Wichita startup on our Wichita Inno website, where the WBJ will continue to highlight the local entrepreneurial environment.
That will continue to include Co-Immunity, which Shonka says is in line for a big 2022.
For her startup, that’s meant something of brand shift that will focus more on being real for the sake of its users.
Shonka says when she started it, she felt it needed a certain professionalism to also help cater to the doctors that will ultimately provide those users needed care.
Now, she says, she has learned for both herself and the Co-Immunity community, authenticity is the real differentiator.
“We’re just creating more casual touch points within the chronically ill community,” she says. “The Co-Immunity brand is very much my story and I wish I had embraced that authenticity earlier on. The authentic me is enough.”
