InsideLouisville, where we introduce you to the people, places and things that make up Kentucky's largest city.

If you've ever felt like you've had the next big idea, go inside Kentucky's Governor's School for entrepreneurs, these are free programs for Kentucky high school and college students who may just be the next generation of innovators.

High schoolers from all over Kentucky are heading to the summer startup program on UC's campus soon for a three week business intensive program that ends with their very own Shark Tank like competition.

Coming up, you'll meet the winners of the latest collegiate pitch competition from the University of Louisville, who took home a $15,000 prize to actually start their startup.

But first, Christie Dutton introduces us to some of the winners from last year's competition, whose business renting jet skis, is really taking off.

>> On the Ohio River.

A new way to experience Louisville is about to take off, thanks to the Governor's School for entrepreneurs, jet ski 502 is open for business at Waterfront Park, offering people the chance to rent jet skis for a ride on the river.

For co-founders Arnold Moto and Golden Indy, this business is years in the making.

>> We actually purchased our first jet ski.

It was a 1995 Yamaha Waverunner so it was.

It was definitely an ancient vehicle, but we loved that thing so much.

And I think that's what grew our passion and being able to get on the water.

And once we did that, we said everyone should experience this.

>> That was five years ago.

Soon that passion turned into a business idea, one that started small.

>> We had started a company called Jet Ski Indy that was our initial, I guess, pilot project, which we were doing jet ski deliveries.

We had discovered GSE, what it was and the School of Entrepreneurship, and from there we decided to sign up for the pitch competition, and we ended up placing second.

>> The Governor's School for entrepreneurs, known as GA for short, helps high school and college students across Kentucky develop business ideas, connect with mentors, and compete for funding for jet ski.

502 that's second place finish in the collegiate pitch gave the business a full throttle start.

>> We won $7,000 to to basically cash inject into our business.

It was really necessary for us because we were transitioning from Indianapolis here to Louisville.

So we needed to buy our docking infrastructure, buy our shed, and all the stuff that you see out here.

We didn't we didn't have until we came through GSE.

So that that that money is what allowed us to be able to open up our business here.

>> The funding helped them chart a new course, riding the wave to the Louisville waterfront.

>> This is really, truly just an extension of us and our hobbies, and we're just so thrilled and excited that we get to share that with the city of Louisville.

>> The two say their partnership goes back to their childhood after both their families moved to the U.S.

from Zimbabwe.

Years later, they would reconnect in high school, eager to launch into deeper waters.

>> We basically spent every day together, you know, like we were always just thinking of that next innovative way to just excel and just become better men.

And that that kind of what led to all of this.

>> And like riding a jet ski, pitching their idea at GSE came with its own adrenaline rush.

>> Going through and pitching has really been it's one of those things where you just kind of have like a nod in your stomach, and it's not even because you're nervous or you're scared.

It's just because you want to, you want to do well, right?

I'll say I'll say they're pretty close because the stakes, the stakes were very high for us.

So I could say, so.

>> Now they're bringing that same tide of excitement to the Ohio River.

>> Once you actually are on that jet ski and you're riding it, it's just thrilling, honestly.

So there's no feeling that's comparable to it.

>> And they say it wouldn't have been possible without the Governor's school for entrepreneurs.

>> You know, these are the people that that make dreams come true and feed the ecosystem, just like what we're able to do here.

So we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for GSE and a lot of these other organizations that pump into our Louisville ecosystem.

>> As jet ski.

502 opens for the summer.

It's a real example of how an idea, a pitch and the right support can make quite a splash for aspiring entrepreneurs.

For Inside Louisville.

I'm Christie Dutton.

>> Well, we are happy to welcome Ann Jewell, the president and CEO of Governor's School for entrepreneurs.

What a cool story there to see how these students really have taken this program to the next level and creating businesses.

So tell me, first of all, the background of GSE, how did it start?

>> Kentucky was one of the first states in the country to create a governor's school for entrepreneurs.

We've been around about 13 years, and some of your viewers are probably familiar with a couple of the other governor's schools, the Governor's School for the Arts and the Governor's Scholars Program, which have been around decades.

And so we're all independent non-profits.

We are not government agencies.

And so we operate independently, but we're all about improving the quality of life here in Kentucky.

And for us in particular, with our focus on entrepreneurship, we look to identify and inspire and empower Kentucky's future innovators and business leaders and support them every step of the way to make their business dreams come true here in Kentucky.

>> That's amazing.

So explain the difference.

There's the high school startup program, and then there's the collegiate program.

Explain the differences.

>> Yes.

So our high school program, the summer startup program, is, was the first program that we had when, when the GSE was launched.

And for three weeks in the summer, we have high school students from across all of Kentucky come and live on a college campus, will be at the University of Kentucky these next couple summers at least.

And we.

It's like a shark tank for high school students.

That's sort of the quick shorthand when I say that people are like, okay, I get it now.

Yeah, yeah.

So over those three weeks, as far as the business, the instruction part of it, we are teaching them to identify problems and come up with solutions and create a business as a team with people they've never met before they got there.

And then they practice pitching their business.

And then there is the competition at the end, the big pitch fest that takes place, which is an amazing two days.

And over the course of these three weeks, that not only is there the skill development of entrepreneurial skills, learning to fail without fear, conflict resolution, and everything else that goes into creating a successful business.

There's also that that development on the personal side, where we are very conscious in the decisions we make about mixing students together who would never have had a chance to meet one another before from different parts of the state, different backgrounds, and really working to break down barriers and stereotypes and build those bridges and those networks across the state.

And the students tell us, the high school students tell us that is one of the greatest benefits of their experience with GSE is the networks, the lasting relationships that they develop with like minded students, you know, across the state that not only, you know, in terms of their personal life, but professional life too, that network is so important in the business world.

Yeah.

And the other thing I love about this program, Kelsey, is that we don't look at test scores or GPA when we are evaluating the applications.

We're not we're not looking at grades.

We're looking for grit and we're looking for drive.

And that entrepreneurial potential to want to kind of chart your own success story, create jobs here in Kentucky.

That's not that's not for everyone.

>> Right?

>> Right.

Yeah.

So there's a certain kind of person that's going to be a success with our high school program.

>> So on this program, we talked to a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and so many of them I'm fascinated by.

But many of them say, you know, I wasn't that great in school.

This was something, you know, that I, and I feel like it's a, they have that grit, like you mentioned.

So how do you how do you choose the students in the application process?

>> Right?

So knowing that, yeah, we're not looking at GPA, we're not looking at test scores to try to get at that grit.

They pitch themselves to us.

There's a 92nd video that they submit as part of their application, just talking about themselves.

Maybe if they've got their own business or what would make them part of a great team, because we do emphasize that entrepreneurs come in all kinds of talents and skills.

This is not just a tech thing.

Yeah.

It takes a mix of all kinds of talents to have a successful business, a team members.

Yeah.

And so on.

So along with that video, there's some short, short answer questions that try to get at the heart of that, you know, resiliency, a true passion for this notion of entrepreneurship, trying to, you know, convince us in 50 words or less.

Yeah, you know, X, Y, Z about entrepreneurship and knowing, you know, AI is out there now, right?

And that is something that we're very attuned to and need to stay on top of for what we do.

And we started asking our students about that.

Did you use AI?

And no, it's it's okay if you did.

We're just curious how.

How tell us how you used it in this application.

>> And they don't necessarily have to already have a business idea.

>> They do not.

That is correct.

Yes.

>> Yeah.

That's interesting.

>> Yeah.

We do emphasize that that look, you know, marketing sales.

Sure.

There's tech and then just that kind of visionary stuff.

There are just so many skills and types of people needed to run a successful business.

The big vision mission for us is sort of, you know, changing the the trajectory of the economy here in Kentucky and communities and, and lives.

Yeah.

And so we're the only program to that, that does this in a progression kind of way.

So we don't just it's not over with high school.

You know, we're, we're there for the rest of this entrepreneurial journey, collegiate pitch.

That's a newer program that started, that came our way around 2019.

And this in this program, it is there's game changing money funding that gets awarded.

Yeah, pitch contest winners.

So these collegiate pitch entrepreneurs, there's two different tracks because different businesses are in different places and their development.

So there's an exploratory track for the newer types of businesses.

Maybe it's just a really great idea.

Some funding would help, you know, get it started.

And then there's the developed track, which are the businesses that might already be up and running.

Yeah.

Or even already making money perhaps or something like that.

So you don't want those two kind of competing against one another.

They're different.

They're in different stages.

So we've got the different tracks for that.

And it's just amazing to me.

Even at the high school level, how many young entrepreneurs there already are?

Yeah.

You know, here in Kentucky and for the collegiate pitch folks that the prizes, you know, range from 3000 to $15,000.

>> Wow.

>> And they take it and run with it.

Yeah.

And the key is to be eligible for it.

The business has to be developed here in Kentucky.

Yeah.

Again, that notion of trying to keep it, keep it here.

>> Yeah.

So this is these students are awarded real money to start their startup and it's free for them to participate.

So explain how is it funded.

>> Yes.

So even though we are not a state agency, we're all the we're an independent nonprofit.

We do get state funding.

That is a large chunk.

The largest chunk of our funding does come from from the citizens of Kentucky, quite honestly, which we're very, very thankful for.

Right.

The General Assembly, you know, does the budget and we are part of that.

And then on top of that, we also raise money, you know, private efforts, foundations, individual giving, and so on to help raise money.

>> You you touched on this a little bit, but I want you to talk a little bit more about how important it is to get these students to stay in Kentucky.

It is a it's an economic development program, really.

>> It is.

It is.

And we track as best we can, because it's a little tricky to track how many businesses actually develop, you know, from here, right?

Like trying to stay in touch with the high school students and the collegiate students and even on into the alumni program, which is our newest program.

As we've been growing our number of alumni, that's sort of the next track where we want to still let them know we're here, because that's when they're really getting into that business life and world and so on.

And we and we're still here for them in Kentucky is still here for them.

So we love, you know, stories like Telecast Communications in LaRue County, where he identified an issue.

He was one of our high school students.

And he noticed, you know, broadband internet issues that in his rural area, especially around the Covid time when it was desperately needed if you were going to accomplish anything.

>> Yeah.

Right.

>> So he started his own business in that world.

And just in the last year, he, he earned $1 million, you know, grant to expand his business.

And he's hiring for more people.

We hear, you know, from alumni who, even if they had their own high school program, own high school business, when they even when they came to stay with us, they tracked their business before and after GSE.

And they can show us the, the upward trend in their business, you know, after they take what they've learned with us and applied it to their business.

Yeah.

And we hear from students who just, you know, yes, they're interested in business, don't know how to go about it.

And once they finish with us, they, they tell us, yeah.

And now I really understand it's about solving problems, solutions to problems are the successful businesses.

And I want to do that in my community.

>> Yeah.

>> And so that's all a part of that message of staying here in Kentucky, making a difference in your community.

Yeah.

>> What a wonderful program.

Well, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

And when we come back, you're going to meet some of the students who recently won the collegiate pitch competition, students from right here at the University of Louisville.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Well, we are happy to welcome Justin Hauts and Kieren Richards, the co-founders of Claustrum Design.

So tell us about your business and how it was initially created.

>> Yeah.

Of course.

So our company Claustrum Design, we make biomedical tools with the goal to empower physicians and elevate the standard of patient care.

And this all started our first year of medical school.

So we're finishing up our second year right now.

And we had been doing some clinical rotations.

And I had seen these procedures being done under ultrasound guidance, where they were either injecting or aspirating, like sucking out fluid from different parts of the body and just using a regular syringe to do it.

And it was wobbly.

It wasn't super accurate.

The patients were in a lot of pain.

And so I'd been kind of thinking like, man, that's crazy that, you know, there's no better way to do this.

And these, these procedures are done all the time.

Individual physicians do thousands of these a year.

Right?

And so I'd been kind of thinking about like, well, what could we do differently?

And one of the nights I went to bed, I actually had a dream.

And in my dream, I saw somebody holding the syringe in a different way.

And so I woke up at like two in the morning.

I thought, I have to write this down somewhere.

You know, I can't forget about this when I actually wake up for the day.

So I made just horrible little sketch of the idea.

And then I woke up later that day and I was able to sort of remember it and recall it.

And so Kieran and I had been friends, we'd been studying together for a while, and so I just threw the idea off of him.

Honestly, it was really rough.

It was very preliminary.

There wasn't much thought out, but I just thought, hey, what if we could build something like this?

And to his credit, he believed it and he kind of bought into it right away.

So I owe a lot of this project success to him, because I think without that, maybe I would have thought, okay, I'm just crazy and I just had a dream and nothing, nothing ever came of it, you know?

But yeah, so from then we started working on building it.

We started working on designing it.

We got some physicians on board.

We got their feedback.

We were able to iterate the product from that to get to where we're at now, which is sort of like a 2.1 version.

And we were able to participate in GSE, which was an incredible program that really helped us get a lot of great funding and network connections and stuff while we're starting up.

And so we're super excited to just see where this goes.

You know, it's been kind of a wild ride.

>> Yeah.

So tell me about GSE.

How did you find out about it and get involved?

>> So some people actually at the University of Louisville were really great, and they connected us to the GSE program and they told us, hey, we believe in you guys.

You guys should apply for this program.

And see you guys can get into the pitch.

And we were lucky enough to get in and we pitched our idea among a amazing other entrepreneurs here from Kentucky.

All these really great minds were there and share these wonderful ideas of their businesses.

And we, again, we're fortunate enough to, to win the, the pitch and we've been able to use that money to actually create our product.

It's in production right now.

There's a really great local Louisville business here called Occam Design, and they are actually manufacturing our product right now as we speak.

So we've been able to put that money towards that, and hopefully we'll have a great prototype to get into clinical use and start start doing some trials with it.

>> What what did you learn from doing that pitch program?

I mean, you guys are in medical school.

You're planning to be doctors, not entrepreneurs, right?

So it could be both.

You could you could be both now.

Yeah.

Right.

But so like, what did you learn from the Governor's School for entrepreneurs that has changed the trajectory of your business besides the money prize, obviously.

>> Yeah.

One of the initial things that we learned is that there are so many people who believe in you, and not just here in Louisville, but across the Commonwealth.

There's so many people who want to see other people succeed in their businesses.

And as we are able to receive that, we are trying to help other people as well.

We've had some other local entrepreneurs reach out to us trying to get our advice.

We feel like we may not know enough to share with them, but still, building that connection with them is fundamental to building the economy here and being able to help other people reach their success as well.

>> Yeah.

>> I think GSE is also a great demonstration of how much the state of Kentucky is investing into local entrepreneurs and into building up businesses here.

Some of the companies, like Huron said they were there that pitched.

They were incredible.

I mean, they're doing amazing things from all different sectors.

And so it's really a testament to this state's belief in its own citizens to, to raise up the economy and to create new jobs and opportunities.

>> And now you all are developing other products.

Tell me a little bit about those.

>> So we're building a couple other products too.

We have a modification on a standard pair of surgical scissors that we use that are for certain abdominal procedures.

It just they're designed mechanically for a better ergonomics in that area.

We're working with Doctor Eddie Rahmani, who's an incredible neurosurgeon here at UofL, on a product that would change some of the surgical sterilization process, which is like a operations management side of medicine.

So we've got a suture design that we modified that helps with grip and control.

So we've got a few other little things we're working on here and there.

I like to cast a wide net.

You know we we try to have a lot of ideas.

Most of them just kind of fizzle out within like 5 or 6 days.

Some of them stick around for longer and then some of them actually turn into something.

So we're hoping if we, if we try hard enough in enough different areas, you know, some of those things will take off.

>> So that's how business development works though, right?

A lot of trial and error, I would imagine.

So what would you tell students or other people who maybe think, you know, I people have ideas like this all the time, right?

What, what would you tell them about going from, you know, scribbling in their notebook in the middle of the night to actually making it happen?

What's your best advice?

>> It's a great question.

I think first and foremost is try to embrace it as much as you can, even if it just seems like a crazy idea.

Go share it with people you trust, the people you know who will support you.

Try to take the time to really think it through.

Think about how this might work, how may not what.

What you need to do to make it work and try to bridge that gap as much as you can.

>> Yeah, I think it's we live in a society that's so focused on the highlights and the success, right.

And social media people only post about their great days, their awards, they win.

Nobody's posting about like the 20 grants we've applied to that we did not get.

You know, nobody's talking about the 20 ideas we had that never manifested into anything and just crashed and burned.

Right.

But when you actually meet other entrepreneurs and you learn that that is the normal experience, right?

That is not you, you know, a unique set of failures and it's okay to fail and try again and try again.

And if we even look back on like our device, like we'll say precision direct has seen a moderate level of success.

Our first ideas of what it would look like are so different from where we're at now.

But it was that process of starting with those ideas, and we tried it out and it didn't work.

And so we made a modification and we tried that out and it didn't work, and we made a modification.

And eventually we were fortunate enough with that product to reach a place where we actually have something that we're producing and hoping to send into clinical trials here, or device trials, I should say.

And so just becoming comfortable with that failure and not taking that as a personal reflection of yourself or your, your intellect or your ideas or anything like that, but just realizing that that's just a normal part of the process.

And don't be afraid to fail.

And don't let that hold you back from pursuing your ideas.

>> The Governor's School for entrepreneurs Summer startup is happening at UC's Gatton School of Business this summer, June 20th through July 12th.

You can find out more when you visit ket.org/insidelouisville or follow us on social media.

You can find us on Instagram at KETinLOU.

Thanks for spending a little time getting to know Louisville.

I hope we'll see you here next time.

Until then, make it a great week.