Meet Christopher Aumueller, CEO & Founder @ FanWord 

How would you describe the startup culture in Nebraska?

It’s definitely growing. It’s supportive and it’s very dynamic too. When you start talking to founders (early founders in particular) they’re very excited to start something here. And while I can’t necessarily pinpoint if that’s a matter of community support or just school or other resources they might tap into, it’s definitely something that I find very unique about the startup culture here.

I’ve talked to founders in other parts of this country, and I think the excitement and the support to get something off the ground in Nebraska is really amazing and very unique. I think it’s probably attributed to the community and the community support to encourage people to build something here. It makes it a little less scary to give this a shot.

How do you balance taking risks and making calculated decisions in pursuit of innovation?

I think this entirely depends on so many different factors: your industry, the stage you’re in, the data you have access to and the insights and learnings you have gathered over your business’s journey. But I read something the other day, and it broke down decisions into one-way door decisions and two-way door decisions. Two-way door decisions are decisions where you make a decision but you can revert back relatively easily. And for those kinds of decisions, I think it’s a good idea to do them quickly, learn and then to adjust and pivot if necessary. 

But these one-way door decisions, where it’s really hard to go back on them, I think it’s really important that you consider everything you have access to, like your data, your customer feedback, your insights, your market position and your economics. Obviously, you have to take risks. You will never ever be able to predict the outcome per se, but you can do things to reduce the risk. And I think that is your job as a founder to make that call. 

How do you define success and what metrics do you pay the most attention to?

We obviously look at very tangible, measurable metrics, like revenue and sales, and those kinds of things matter a hundred percent. And there are some intangibles, like just feedback and what’s the overall sentiment, that I think are very important metrics to at least track—to hopefully turn those into sales and revenue at some point. 

For me personally, I’m a very passion-driven entrepreneur, too. I started my business out of passion. In a perfect world, success also means that I inspire others, or at least help others, pursue their dreams and entrepreneurial dreams. If there’s anything I can do to assist them, it’s incredibly important to me if somebody comes up and feels even a little bit inspired by seeing the journey. And that definitely is something that I value a lot. It’s something that I know helped me a ton back in the day and continues to guide me. 

What are the top one or two challenges / opportunities Nebraska startups face?

You often obviously hear the whole access to capital response. But I don’t have a lot of comparisons, to be honest with you. I’ve never started a business somewhere else. I can talk to friends and colleagues in other cities and states about how they found funding and what they had to go through. But it’s difficult to compare that based on my experience. 

I do think that we definitely have a bit of a reputation as a “flyover state,” and there’s a lot of work being done to overcome terms like this and to help folks understand that this is anything but a flyover state. I’ve talked to people before who maybe lacked a little bit of courage and felt like they might need to go somewhere else to pursue their entrepreneurial dream and venture. 

I still, to this day, think that the community support is unmatched here. I genuinely feel like the people want to see you succeed and are very accessible, which I think is often half the battle. There are a lot of people who want to help you and would be happy to sit down with you and chat and listen to you and share their two cents. And I think that’s pretty rare. You can literally reach out here to people who have done it all, and they are all, again, always willing to help you. So I do think the access to resources, whether it’s mentorship or community support, is pretty remarkable here. And that’s something that we need to continue to promote and advertise.

What is one emerging industry or technology that you believe will have a significant impact on the Nebraska startup ecosystem in the next few years?

I’m a bit biased, but I think sports tech is definitely an industry that will continue to grow here. I think companies like Hudl and Opendorse obviously lead the way, but, selfishly, it also makes me very proud when people mention FanWord in the same sentence. I do think that we have some really awesome sports tech companies, and with the Huskers, Creighton and UNO—great college athletic departments—there is just a really good combination.