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Innovative ideas can come from anywhere, and rural America is full of entrepreneurs who are creating new solutions to 21st-century problems.

However, for rural entrepreneurs, where they live can limit their access to funders and investment capital that is crucial to growing their ideas. 

With its annual Small Towns, Big Ideas pitch event, the Center on Rural Innovation seeks to bridge that divide, connecting pre-seed or seed-stage rural tech startups from the Rural Innovation Network with national investors and a chance to win a $10,000 cash prize.  Since 2021, CORI has given small-town tech entrepreneurs a national spotlight in a virtual format. And this year we’re bringing the entrepreneurs directly and funders together in-person on Nov. 13 at Dartmouth College for the 2024 event. 

Ahead of this year’s event, we caught up with four past participants to hear about what they’ve been up to since making their pitch at Small Towns, Big Ideas.

Kanesha Barnes-Adams: Bearapy Bookshelf

Pine Bluff, Arkansas

The hustle hasn’t stopped for Kanesha Barnes-Adams, the founder of Bearapy Bookshelf, whose pitch won the top prize in the 2023 Small Towns, Big Ideas pitch event — it has ramped up to match her growing venture.

Barnes-Adams said the experience helped her refine her approach, among other benefits, as she continues to create partnerships and work with her target audience to grow the reach of her multifaceted therapy platform.

“Participating in the CORI pitch event helped me fine-tune my marketing strategy, and has allowed me to build a subscription based model to support my ideal customer,” Barnes-Adams said. 

Bearapy Bookshelf has since opened a physical location to serve students and families, and that growth in square footage has coincided with expanding revenue streams.

Troy Morris: Kall Morris, Inc.

Marquette, Michigan

The inaugural winner of Small Towns, Big Ideas is closing in on a pair of remarkable milestones: As Kall Morris, Inc. (KMI) prepares for its Series A funding round, it will also be launching its technology to the International Space Station.

KMI,  a startup focused on orbital debris research and solution development, has grown steadily since claiming the top  prize in CORI’s first pitch event. The young aerospace firm employs 17 people in its downtown Marquette facility, has completed its pre-seed and seed funding rounds, and landed eight contracts with NASA, the U.S. Space Force, and the U.S. Air Force.

“The pitch event gave a vote of confidence to ourselves, and a signal to our supporters, that this dream of success in space wasn’t out-of-this-world,” said Morris, co-founder and CEO. “Without it, we couldn’t have executed on early goals or pursued some small capital opportunities, which in turn led to the following steps of ongoing success.”

The long-awaited ISS mission this fall will allow KMI to demonstrate its products and inform design for upcoming spacecraft, including for the active debris removal technology that’s core to its mission of keeping space clear for all.

“We feel like a functioning small business — still in a wild industry — compared to our lean startup ride, and are eager to continue demonstrating excellence from the north coast of the Upper Peninsula,” Morris said.

Ramsey Shaffer: Uptrends.ai (formerly Babbl)

Red Wing, Minnesota

Ramsey Shaffer joined the 2022 Small Towns, Big Ideas event with Babbl, a platform that helped do-it-yourself investors make sense of the dizzying volume of market news to gain usable insights into specific stocks by scraping the internet for relevant coverage about more than 5,000 stocks. Since then, Shaffer and his team have rebranded the company as Uptrends.ai, honed their algorithms to better uncover the market trends, and added features to the platform.

“Uptrends recently launched our primary website, we’re growing past 20,000 users, and we just made our first $1,000in monthly recurring revenue,” Shaffer said. “We are planning to raise a seed round to expand our team and scale.”

And participating in CORI’s annual pitch event helped Uptrends get to this critical point of growth, Shaffer said. Small Towns, Big Ideas provided Uptrends a platform to share their idea and created connections to mentors who could guide them through the twists and turns of building a startup.

“CORI strengthened relationships with core supporters and investors that have helped get us to where we are today,” he said. 

Julia Taylor: GeekPack

Durango, Colorado

Julia Taylor, founder and CEO of GeekPack took what she learned from her own tech-skill-building journey to create a platform that incorporates community support into its effort to close the digital skills gap affecting millions of women — and empower them on a path to economic mobility. 

Since participating in the 2023 edition of Small Town, Big Ideas, Taylor has been busy expanding the GeekPack Partners Program by partnering with nonprofits to offer tech and entrepreneurship educational programming. Fine-tuning her pitch with CORI’s team was critical for Geekpack’s continued growth. 

“By participating in Small Towns, Big Ideas, I honed my pitch skills, which helped me secure awards,” Taylor said.  

Geekpack has since garnered several accolades for its work —  both for its Partner Program and its direct-to-consumer offerings. This recognition has included: First place for the North America region of the Cartier Women’s Initiative; 2024 Tory Burch Fellow; Top 25 Most Powerful Women by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce; and 2024 Colorado Companies to Watch. 

It doesn’t stop here.

Rural tech startups are everywhere — these are just a few examples of the inspiring participants in CORI’s Small Towns, Big Ideas pitch event since it launched in 2021. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the exciting tech startups in the Rural Innovation Network and the Center on Rural Innovation’s work with entrepreneurs in rural communities, sign up for our newsletter or get in touch with our team.

And be sure to save the date for Nov. 13th, and plan on joining us in-person or virtually for this year’s Small Towns, Big Ideas.