Big Idea Norfolk Puts Local Founders in the Spotlight
By: Nick Stevenson
The Cove at Midtown Event Center became a stage for some of the region’s most promising business ideas in October. Roughly 60 community members came out for the second annual Big Idea Norfolk to watch nine entrepreneurs make their case in a Shark Tank-style showdown.
Big Idea Norfolk is hosted by Intersect Coworking & Incubator, part of Invest Nebraska. Entrepreneurs submit their concepts ahead of time, and a select group advances as finalists. On pitch night, each finalist gets just two minutes to sell their vision, then fields questions from the judges and the audience.
Photo Credit: xpm.agency
First place and $3,000: Farmhand on Demand. Ashley Babl grew up around farming and ranching and knows how hard it is to find dependable help when the work piles up. Her platform connects farmers and ranchers with people who want agricultural work, from a single day of help to a full harvest or calving season. It’s also open to people with no ag connections who want hands-on experience, and to professionals like welders, electricians and bookkeepers who serve agricultural clients. Ashley says she was frustrated by high quotes for building the site and app, so she taught herself to do it. She also wanted to give farmers an alternative to costly hiring agencies.
The platform launched in February and now counts 268 workers in 42 states. Some early users were unexpected: an Alaska fishing boat looking for a deckhand, and a Pennsylvania farm seeking help watering horses.
Ashley said winning meant a lot to her as a single mother. Public speaking pushed her out of her comfort zone, and she wanted her kids to see her do something that scared her.
Second place and $1,000: CredSync. Second place and $1,000: CredSync. Suzanne Scott teaches counseling and works as a professional counselor, and she knows the headache of tracking renewal dates for her own licenses and certifications. CredSync is her fix: one place where professionals in any field can keep their credentials, get alerts before something expires, and pull together compliance reports when they need them.
Third place: WebpageIQ. Many small business websites get built, launched, and then ignored for years. Dylan Frohberg, who runs Frohberg Computers, an IT and computer repair business, saw this often, and he noted that a traffic report tells owners how many people visited but not what to do about it. WebpageIQ is his answer: owners create and run their sites on the platform, which watches how visitors actually use the pages and points out specific changes worth making.
People’s Choice Award: Andrea’s Minipancakes Cafe. The audience’s favorite pitch came from Andrea Gonzalez, who wants to turn her food truck’s following into a sit-down restaurant in Norfolk. The menu would mix American and Venezuelan breakfast dishes, with mini pancakes, waffles, and crepes on the list, in a setting meant for families and for dessert as well as breakfast.
Launchpad Award: Dakota Gullicksen. Dakota earned a one-year membership at Northeast Community College’s iHUB, a downtown space for building and testing new ideas.
Invest Nebraska started Big Idea Norfolk to highlight and support what entrepreneurs are working on in Norfolk and the surrounding region. For the local community, the hope is it gives people the courage to launch a business and shows them that resources and support systems are accessible, even in smaller communities.
Ashley summed up the mood of the night in her thank-you to fellow entrepreneurs: “We have a lot of bright people in our corner of the world.”
