Meet the Five Rural Founders Taking the Stage at Small Towns, Big Ideas 2026
From reimagining local journalism to transforming industrial infrastructure, five rural founders are bringing ambitious ideas to CORI’s 6th annual pitch event this fall—and showing just how expansive rural entrepreneurship can be.
Big ideas are being built in small towns across rural America.
Ambitious founders are building companies that could reach far beyond the communities they call home. They are developing new technologies, rethinking industries, and solving problems with ideas that can scale nationally and even globally—all while building in places that typically have had less access to the capital, networks, and visibility that help startups grow.
On October 29, five of those founders will take the stage at the sixth annual Small Towns, Big Ideas pitch event. Their companies span athletics, local journalism, advanced manufacturing, electrification, and artificial intelligence, reflecting both the range of innovation happening in rural America and the ambition of the people driving it forward.
Hosted by the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) in partnership with the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth, Small Towns, Big Ideas brings promising tech startups from CORI’s Rural Innovation Network together with the people, connections, and opportunities that can help them grow.
This year’s finalists come from four states and are tackling very different challenges. Together, they show just how broad the possibilities for rural entrepreneurship can be—and what can happen when ambitious founders have the opportunity to build from the places they call home.
Meet the 2026 finalists
What if industrial equipment could tell you something was going wrong before it failed? That is the idea behind MotorVision Inc.
Co-founder and President Elijah Jensen and his team are developing technology that gives critical industrial assets what they call a “nervous system,” monitoring equipment so operators can spot potential problems before they become costly failures.
Jensen brings experience spanning industrial, aerospace, and defense environments, along with a Ph.D. in Applied Experimental Physics. At MotorVision, he works directly with customers to integrate the company’s technology into real-world operations and turn equipment data into information that maintenance and operations teams can act on.
From its home in Owingsville, in Eastern Kentucky, MotorVision is taking on a challenge with implications far beyond one community by making the equipment and systems that industries depend on smarter, more reliable, and easier to maintain.
Negotiations depend on more than knowing what you want to say. They require understanding how the person across the table may respond.
Based in Wilmington, New York, in the Adirondacks Region, Jenn Munsie and AUSPEX Intelligence are using AI to help people prepare for those moments.
AUSPEX turns real stakeholder language into AI-powered simulators that allow negotiators to practice conversations and better balance relationships with results.
Munsie spent more than 15 years as a communications strategist, developing behavioral strategy practices and helping organizations understand why people say what they say. At AUSPEX, she is combining that expertise with artificial intelligence to build tools rooted in the complexities of human communication.
It is sophisticated technology focused on an enduringly human challenge: understanding one another when the stakes are high.
For college athletes, success is about more than what happens during practice or competition. Jeff Nyquist and the team at Journai are building technology for everything that surrounds it.
Journai is an on-demand, AI-powered platform designed to support the human side of sports, helping athletes and coaches navigate the challenges that can affect performance and success on and off the field.
Nyquist brings deep experience at the intersection of science, technology, and entrepreneurship. A translational neuroscientist, inventor, and repeat founder, he previously created virtual-reality cognitive training company NeuroTrainer, which was later acquired. He has also served as a principal investigator on National Science Foundation research programs and NIH-funded clinical trials.
Nyquist, from Marquette, Michigan, is putting that experience toward a new question: How can technology help develop the person behind the performance?
Local journalism plays an essential role in documenting the life of a community; this is even more true in rural places where local news outlets are often the only institutions reporting what is happening in that place. Sho Rust wants to give the people doing that work better tools to sustain it.
PubGen.AI is an AI-powered publishing platform built for local and independent newsrooms. It brings editorial workflows, print, subscriptions, advertising, and archives together in one place, with the goal of freeing journalists to spend more time reporting.
For Rust, the challenge is personal. A third-generation member of a family media business based in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, that publishes the Southeast Missourian and more than 40 other titles, he understands both the value of local journalism and the operational pressures facing the industry.
And while generative AI may feel new to many organizations, Rust has been building with the technology since 2018. With PubGen.AI, he is applying that experience to help local news organizations harness new technology while keeping verified information and the stories of their communities at the center.
Power demand is growing faster than much of the infrastructure built to support it. From AI data centers and EV charging to distributed energy and a more dynamic grid, new technologies are creating a need for power systems that are more efficient, flexible, and responsive. Infinity Miles, Inc. is working on technology to support that shift.
Based in Bourbon, Missouri, Infinity Miles develops solid-state transformers designed to make high-power electrification more efficient, compact, and scalable. The technology has potential applications across industries ranging from transportation and infrastructure to energy.
Co-founder and CTO Pourya Shamsi brings deep technical expertise to that challenge. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, has authored more than 120 conference and journal publications, serves on multiple Underwriters Laboratories (UL) committees, and is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri.
Infinity Miles is tackling a challenge that will only become more urgent as electricity demand grows: how to move power more efficiently, flexibly, and intelligently through the systems that increasingly depend on it. From rural Missouri, Shamsi and his team are helping rethink a piece of critical infrastructure that has changed remarkably little in decades.
A Bigger Stage for Rural Innovation
These five companies are working on remarkably different problems. That is exactly the point. There is no single definition of a rural tech startup. Rural founders are building software and hardware. They are applying AI and advanced engineering. They are working in media, sports, manufacturing, energy, and beyond.
What connects them is not an industry. It is ambition, and the belief that where a company starts should not determine how far it can go.
Small Towns, Big Ideas exists to make rural entrepreneurship more visible and to connect rural founders with the relationships, resources, and opportunities that can help ambitious companies grow. More than 40 companies have participated since the event began, demonstrating year after year that scalable innovation can start anywhere.
On Thursday, October 29, this year’s five finalists will pitch live in the Grand Ballroom at the Hanover Inn on Dartmouth College’s campus. They will compete for a $10,000 cash prize, plus $5,000 in legal services. And for the first time, people watching in Hanover and virtually will have a say in the outcome: an Audience Choice Award will give the crowd the opportunity to select a startup to receive an additional $1,500 prize.
The pitches begin at 5:30 p.m. ET, with a reception to follow. Attendees can join in person in Hanover, New Hampshire, or watch virtually from wherever they call home.
Come meet the founders, hear their ideas, and see what’s being built across rural America.
Small towns. Big ideas. Five founders worth watching.
Thank You to our Event Sponsors
