Startup Weekend pitch competition winner CleanOS to launch a real startup helping cleaning businesses with AI

The first Nebraska-based Startup Weekend in a decade saw roughly 60 people attend, with seven teams organized to compete in the pitch competition. Ideas ranged from better insurance software to a maker-focused marketplace to vet and support people selling homemade art.

Lev Gringauz

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June 9, 2026

Laurel Oetken, the CEO of Open Range, which organized Startup Weekend, asks questions during the pitch competition on June 7. Photo by Lev Gringauz/Silicon Prairie News

Roughly 60 people attended the first Nebraska-based Startup Weekend in a decade from June 5-7. Organized by Open Range and Techstars, the weekend was full of networking, mentoring and a sprint to finalize ideas to present at the pitch competition on Sunday.

Spread throughout Catalyst, the medtech- and startup-focused co-working space by the University of Nebraska Medical Center, seven teams tested their assumptions in customer discovery and polished their slide decks.

They competed for a prize that, while not including any direct funding, did offer a logo and branding package, credits from software development startup CodeBuddy, 30-minute meetings with MOVE Venture Capital and Invest Nebraska and legal help.

The first-place team, CleanOS, a platform that helps cleaning businesses manage invoicing and other backend needs with AI, plans to form a real company and take advantage of its prize.

“We said that if we win first place, we have to turn it into a company,” said Eric Yim, a member of CleanOS.

“We used this hackathon as an excuse to actually go and build something,” Yim said. Startup Weekend and the process of customer discovery led to meeting “wonderful people that gave us so much perspective on the idea and fleshed it into something and really made us think, ‘This could be something.’”

CleanOS, the winning team in the Startup Weekend pitch competition, poses for photos. The platform is intended to help local cleaning companies manage invoicing and calendars with AI. Photo by Lev Gringauz/Silicon Prairie News

Here are the three winning teams:

First place: CleanOS.

Eric Yim
Brian Alvarado
Keyik Annagulyyeva
Wyatt Riesz
Sarah Vail

Second place: Recipes.md, an app to digitize written recipes, collect digital recipes and organize them for family use and inheritance.

Michael Joyce
Abbie Perry
Dheeraj Avadhutha
Tazmon Sims
Matthew Newman

Third place: Keyriosity, software to help parents teach their children how to read, including by a gamified platform that can keep families engaged.

Keyosha Atwater
Artez Young
Stephanie Kidd
Tailla Strawn
Dani Hayden
Bennett Waddington
Ethan Strom

Participants in Startup Weekend take a group photo after the pitch competition on June 7. Seven teams competed for a support package that included branding, CodeBuddy coding credits, co-working space at The Grove and meetings with investors. Photo by Lev Gringauz/Silicon Prairie News

The other competing teams:

Bespoke Omaha, a platform and online community designed for people who sell their art
Largesse, an online one-stop shop for managing insurance
BridgeWorks, software to help laid-off employees find their next job
PulseCWI, a platform to track how employees and managers are feeling and remind managers to be more encouraging

Channels: Entrepreneurs & Startups

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lev Gringauz

Before joining Silicon Prairie News, Lev Gringauz reported on the Jewish communities of Minnesota and Cincinnati for Jewfolk, Inc., and was a regular freelancer for MinnPost, covering the business of media in Minnesota. His writing career started with making love songs for high school sweethearts. On a two-year leave of absence from college, he fell into journalism while exploring Ukraine and Belarus, where his parents were born. As a freelancer he developed a niche in enterprise philanthropy reporting, while also writing stories on subjects ranging from cybersecurity issues to the intersection of AI and journalism.