NMotion’s gBETA community pitch night draws a large crowd, both online and in person

146 attendees turned out to last night’s gBETA community pitch night at the Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln, with another 77 attending thanks to a simultaneous live-streamed on Twitch. COVID protocols were in place, and some attendees donned masks. The event marked a celebration of Nebraska’s startup ecosystem, featuring presentations from five early-stage Nebraska startups…

146 attendees turned out to last night’s gBETA community pitch night at the Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln, with another 77 attending thanks to a simultaneous live-streamed on Twitch. COVID protocols were in place, and some attendees donned masks.

The event marked a celebration of Nebraska’s startup ecosystem, featuring presentations from five early-stage Nebraska startups that recently completed the intense, seven-week NMotion gBETA pre-accelerator.

Scott Henderson, managing director of NMotion Accelerator—a gener8tor program—kicked off the night with humor and some backstory about his experience as a boomerang Nebraskan. (After working in Atlanta for 20 years, Henderson returned to his home state last year upon securing his current job.)

Following Henderson, Jack Keating, CEO of Corral Technologies, led the presentation round with a deck about the company he first dreamed up while growing up ranching with his father near Atkinson, Neb. Corral Technologies offers an easy-to-use virtual fencing system that allows ranchers to move their cattle remotely, track their herd, and create fences anywhere. A mechanical engineering major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Keating won the UNL Center for Entrepreneurship’s New Ventures Competition and a $25,000 grant from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development before entering the gBETA program.

“I’ve been through the ups and downs of a ranching community and understand what ranchers go through on a daily basis,” Keating said. “The margins for ranchers are very thin.”

Corral Technologies aims to help ranchers increase their profit margins, particularly as rising beef prices have made it so that many ranchers cannot afford the very product they produce—despite record profits netted by the meatpacking industry, according to a recent Bloomberg article.

Next up was Jessica Charlsen with Job Share Connect, an employee development platform that facilitates “job sharing,” an arrangement where two employees share one full-time position. The work-life balance model is meant to accommodate professionals who desire more flexibility over their work environment. Many WFH professionals experienced such flexibility for the first time ever in their careers, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“When COVID hit, and all of a sudden, these systems that had been built began to crumble, and new ways of work began to emerge,” Charlsen said. “Employees started to see this and said, ‘We want to work differently, too.’ And now they’re saying, ‘If we can’t work differently here, we’ll work differently somewhere else.’”

Charlsen cited a recent Business Insider article that reported 95% of employees were considering leaving their position.

“Think about that,” she said.

At least two companies did. Though Job Share Connect launches in August, the startup has already secured two paid clients. 

Following Charlsen’s presentation, Emily Buettner, co-founder and CEO of Plug Sports, took the stage.

Plug Sports connects college athletic programs to the 86% of qualified high school student athletes overlooked in the traditional recruitment process. 

Buettner described the platform as a LinkedIn for athletes and recruiters.

Rounding out the night were Sarah Rasby, CEO and co-founder of Sub Guru, which helps boutique fitness studio managers save time on coordinating substitute instructors for classes; and Dan Stara, co-founder of VIZN Stats, an app that reduces the time baseball coaches spend capturing and analyzing practice performance metrics.

In an email sent to SPN following the event, Henderson wrote that the evening drew a vibrant crowd.

Folks showed up early and stayed late. Folks lingered until 45 minutes after the program ended.”

 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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