JumpStart Challenge Names Winners
As we move forward and begin to implement the recommendations in the Angelou Economic Report for Lincoln, our focus continues to be on the three over-arching points of emphasis contained in the report:
• Workforce Development
• Entrepreneurship Growth
• Infrastructure Upgrades
Left to Right: Tyler Sprunk, Derek Maze, and Colin Nabity – Photo courtesy of Patti Vannoy
On the entrepreneurship front, I’m excited to name the two winners of our latest JumpStart Challenge – Tyler Sprunk with Forgelight Creative and Colin Nabity with LeverageRx.
The JumpStart Challenge is a program that was conceived as a way to bring businesses with technical challenges together with people with solutions. In most any business, you are often met with a situation where you say: “I just wish someone would come up with a better way to do this!”
The JumpStart Challenge allows us to do that by asking businesses to present their challenge to a group of entrepreneurs, programmers, and all-around big thinkers. The problem solvers in the room get a couple of weeks to team-up and formulate a solution. Then, they get the opportunity to pitch a solution back to the business. The goal is simple: to spur innovation and create a potential new business that is able to grow and market its solution to other businesses that face a similar problem beyond Lincoln’s borders.
We’ve had notable success here before with the creation of Liveby, a result of a challenge brought forward by HomeServices and with the creation of Nobl Health, a result of the inaugural JumpStart Challenge competition and a challenge presented by Bryan Health.
In this year’s challenge, Tyler Sprunk walked away with the prize for a software tool he pitched that would customize content related to recruiting people to Lincoln. His creation would compare 15-20 data points about Lincoln to any other competing city and display the top five positive factors about our community.
Colin Nabity’s pitch came from the open competition. His idea focuses on the need for added training in the areas of finance, legal, and business practices for medical professionals. Colin’s company, LeverageRx, would fill that gap with an online financial help desk and recommended products and services, such as financing to support the user’s medical practice. The platform would be free and allow users in the medical profession to remain anonymous for medical professionals. However, vetted and approved financial professionals would pay for access.
For more information about the Challenge or this year’s winners, check out the Partnership’s website at www.selectlincoln.org.
Seeing the interest and enthusiasm from the entrepreneurship and startup community always excites me for the future of Lincoln. Angelou has it right – in order to be a globally competitive city, we must encourage and grow these new ideas and new companies. I’m confident our community is committed to doing that.
The Chamber’s mission is to improve the lives of Lincoln residents by providing increased economic opportunity and can only be accomplished together. For more information on the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, (www.lcoc.com) please contact Jaime Henning at jaimehenning@lcoc.com.