Meet Ben Jackson, CEO @ Guardify

Guardify is a Nebraska-based provider of digital evidence management solutions, serving child advocacy organizations, prosecution offices and law enforcement.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur or support other entrepreneurs?

I’ve been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. My mom had a unique way of looking at the world — she’d see a problem and immediately start thinking of how we could solve it, even as kids. I remember her teaching us how to run a newspaper route, or go door to door selling magazines. At its core, it was never just about money — it was about learning that if you do good, honest work for someone, they’ll pay you for it. 

That simple principle stuck with me. It wasn’t about building a company at first — it was about being useful, creative and willing to try. And in many ways, that still defines how I build and how I support others who are doing the same.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to when you were just starting out?

Make mistakes faster — just make them smaller and smarter. The fear that stops most people is the fear of a catastrophic failure, but most progress happens through taking small, intelligent risks and adjusting as you go. I wish I had embraced that earlier. 

And just as important, I’d tell myself to study people. Not just customers, but team members, partners, families. Learn how they think, how they solve problems, what matters to them. Understanding people is 10 times more valuable than understanding technology — because people are the ones you’re building for, and with.

How do you stay motivated when things feel overwhelming — or stagnant?

I come back to the people we serve. When you’re building technology that impacts real lives — families, kids, justice system workers — you don’t have the luxury of giving up when it gets hard. That perspective grounds me. 

And when things feel stagnant, I get curious. I ask better questions, look for different angles and sometimes just step back and breathe. I’ve learned that rest isn’t the opposite of productivity — it’s part of the cycle. Clarity often shows up when you stop trying to force it.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge has been growing a mission-driven company without compromising the mission. When you’re scaling quickly, there’s pressure to chase trends, mimic competitors or conform to what investors expect. But we’ve made a conscious decision to grow on our terms. That meant turning down funding that didn’t align with our values, building a culture that prioritizes people over metrics and staying focused on long-term impact over short-term wins. 

What got us through was clarity of purpose — and surrounding ourselves with people who believe in that purpose, too.

How can the Nebraska community support you?

If we want Nebraska to be a real hub for tech, we need to be bolder. That means taking more risks on early-stage startups — and continuing to fund them as they grow. Right now, it’s incredibly difficult to access meaningful capital once a company starts gaining traction here. Most of us are forced to look to larger cities just to survive. That’s a missed opportunity.

We need more people who aren’t just writing small checks at the beginning, but who are ready to back companies making a real impact with serious investment. If we want these jobs to stay in Nebraska, we need the capital to stay, too. So please — invest early, invest again and help us build companies that not only start here, but thrive here.

One of the biggest challenges in our region isn’t a lack of talent or ambition — it’s that we often fail to connect with the people around us who have already walked the path we’re on. In the Midwest, we’re humble by nature. We put our heads down, do the work and sometimes miss the chance to reach out — either to help someone else or to ask for help ourselves.

Too often, I find out after the fact that there was someone right here in Nebraska who had already solved a problem I struggled through. That’s a missed opportunity — not just for me, but for all of us. There are incredibly successful companies in our own backyard, and many of us don’t even know they exist.

That’s why platforms like Silicon Prairie News matter so much — they shine a light on the wins, the momentum and the people driving innovation in our region. But we need to take it a step further. We need to be actively engaged — up and down the growth stack — from early founders to scaled tech leaders. If we start making those connections with more intention, we’ll unlock so much more potential right here at home.