Before the competition, held last week at the Speed Art Museum on UofL’s Belknap campus, new president Dr. Neeli Bendapudi moderated a fireside chat between Case, co-founder of America Online, and Bill Ready, chief operating officer of PayPal.

They talked entrepreneurship and innovation before the judges heard from seven Louisville startup companies and chose one — Inscope — for an investment from the .

Many of the presenting companies had a connection to UofL. Five went through training programs such as LaunchIt or RevIt offered by the UofL Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship, and/or received a startup grant to grow their business here. Some, like FreshFry and Mailhaven, are led by UofL alumni.

For Inscope, the connections are deep.

“This was born at the business school — room 222, with Dr. Van Clouse,” said CEO Maggie Galloway, who pitched at the Rise of the Rest event. “Now we’ve got a product on the market that could save lives.”

Galloway co-founded the company, which produces a suction laryngoscope device for clearing patient airways, as part of a student team in the Entrepreneurship MBA program at the College of Business.

There, they worked with Clouse, chair of entrepreneurship and director of the Forcht Center. The Inscope team built up the company, and won after after for their business plan and pitch.

“I am very proud of Incsope’s continuing success,” Clouse said. “In addition to launching a high performance new venture, the team continues to give generously of their time to the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

The UofL Office of Technology Transfer worked with the company on commercialization and provided advice on the patenting process. Inscope just recently , the Inscope Direct, and is now finishing up a new product that incorporates video.

And they’re still winning pitch contests — like Rise of the Rest.

“We are absolutely overwhelmed for Inscope; it’s a fantastic achievement and they’ve worked so hard,” said Dr. Holly Clark, deputy director of OTT. “The team and technology started with a great idea to address a critical medical need. With the team’s skill, determination, and dedication, they’ll continue to go far.”

The “Rise of the Rest” seed fund is backed by Revolution, an investment firm led by Case. The fund invests in early-stage companies located outside of major startup hubs, like New York City or San Francisco.

Louisville was the last stop of the 2018 Rise of the Rest tour, after Dallas, Memphis, Birmingham and Chattanooga. There’s a video on the Louisville leg of the tour .��

The product, BlackTop, is a software platform that lets asphalt contractors locate dump trucks and get the right number to construction sites.

“It feels great to reach this milestone as a company,” CEO Nick McRae said. “As the 2018 construction season gets underway, we are excited to work closely with our current and future customers as they leverage BlackTop to request and track their virtual fleets.”

McRae and co-founder Max Kommor met in the Entrepreneurship MBA program at the UofL College of Business, where students learn how to launch their own companies.

McRae’s background was in software development and information technology leadership, and Kommor had worked in the heavy highway industry. So, starting a construction technology company made perfect sense.

“Assembling a talented development team to bring BlackTop to life was a fun, rewarding experience and one that was made possible through support we received from the University of Louisville, and ,” McRae said.

The team conducted more than 300 customer discovery interviews to identify pain points as they developed their product.

According to the company, typical GPS fleet management solutions use expensive hardware and are built just for companies that own trucks. The BlackTop platform lets the people contracting those trucks request vehicles from preferred trucking vendors directly and track drivers using a free mobile app.

The MetaConstruction team has been working toward this launch for a while. As students, they pitched the idea in several throughout the state, including UofL’s Brown-Forman Cardinal Challenge. In that challenge, they had coaching from the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship at the UofL College of Business.

“We are extremely proud of the MetaConstruction team,” said Suzanne Bergmeister, the center’s entrepreneur-in-residence and assistant director. “It’s been amazing to see them build this business — first as UofL students, and now as alumni.”

They refined the idea as participants in the National Science Foundation at UofL, which provides training and mentorship.

“This team has tremendous entrepreneurial spirit and drive,” said Dr. Van Clouse, co-principal investigator for the Innovation Corps program and director of the UofL Forcht Center. “We’re very proud of what they have done so far, and look forward to seeing them build on their success.” 

McRae said there are already plans for that. Now that BlackTop is out, he said the team is looking forward to expanding into the four-state region of Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio.

The app, MoveMe, was created by a team in the Entrepreneurship MBA program at the . The idea is pretty simple — like a sports version of Match.com or eHarmony, the app matches people with others who share their schedule, interests and level of fitness.��

“It’s not just pairing you with anyone,” said co-founder Eric Reskin. “It’s pairing you with the most compatible partner to help achieve your goals.” 

Reskin and partner Andy Ortegon came up with the idea after surveying about 100 people around Louisville about pain points that might keep them from getting a good workout. They found that most people needed a buddy for accountability, but had trouble finding others who were compatible.��

The team developed their product and business plan in the Entrepreneurship MBA program, which walks students through launching a startup step-by-step. They’re given guidance, legal services and practice pitching to investors.��

“By the time many of our students graduate, they already have investors lined up, too,” said Dr. Van Clouse, chair of the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship. “They know what investors look for, they know how to pitch to investors and they and they’re designing their businesses to enable them to raise money to support their dreams.” 

Teams also compete for funding at competitions.��MoveMe, for example, won Kentucky’s statewide 2016  competition, and took home $25,000 to continue work on their app and company — which Reskin says they certainly plan to do.��

“MoveMe started just as an academic thing, but we really fell in love with the idea,” he said. “And we tried day after day to find someone to tell us we’re idiots and we need to stop, but it hasn’t happened yet. So, we’re going to continue and now we get to really focus on the true development of the app and the business itself.” 

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