MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Mountain State entrepreneurs presented their ideas Wednesday in front of business leaders from across the state in the hopes of receiving funds.
The West Virginia Entrepreneurship Ecosystem announced awards valued at over $100,000 to businesses ranging from AI to personalized clothing as part of Bridging Innovation Week hosted in Morgantown. The awards were presented to the winners of four separate pitch competitions.
“The goal of Bridging Innovation Week is making those intentional collisions so we make sure that we’re building a pipeline,” said West Virginia Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Tara St. Clair. “As you heard today, we had Spark West Virginia with the middle school and high school students, we had Ignite West Virginia, and we just gave away $100,000 just in Ignite West Virginia non-dilutive funds.”
For the SparkWV Innovative Pitch competition involving students in high school and younger, Hancock County-based Conscious Quality took home the top prize for Small Business pitches. Monongalia County-based ArrivTrack took home the first prize award for the Big Ideas category.
“The way that my business works would be I would work one-on-one with every single client to figure out what meets their needs best, and the pricing would then depend on what exactly services those clients were looking for,” said Kairi Thornburg, the founder of Conscious Quality, a sensor-friendly clothing business.
Charleston-based small business Goldenrod Kitchen won the IgniteWV pitch competition in the category for Main Street finalists, where they were awarded $25,000. This was followed by Huntington-based AI business Storefront, which won the Tech category. Monongalia County-based Human Creative, which works to certify created content online, received $12,000 as Tech finalist.
“Someone asked what type of algorithm or system we use in order to detect AI, and I reported that we have a bunch of metrics that track human editorial behavior,” said Tiffany Ward, the founder of Human Creative.
Cashless-AI vending machine startup LeVendi Bros. took home the Vantage Ventures Validation Day crowd-selected “Most Leaned” Award, Dr. Mona Ghias and Zachary Edgell were selected as the two winners in the LG NOVA’s Elevate West Virginia competition.
Each competition was judged by separate panels of five West Virginia business leaders, who ranged from finance to technology. Each of the panelists offered ways to present the best sides of an idea for those participating, while offering opportunities to improve on the idea based on real-world experience.
“I just love seeing people who are really focused on getting initial early customers, I think there’s no better proof for a business than actual revenue,” said Inconic Air co-founder James Carnes, who served as a panelists in the IgniteWV competition. “So if they’re able to show they’ve got some early customers, some early traction, things are really getting used and adopted, and there’s a key problem we’re solving for them, that’s what I love to see as a judge.”
The competitions hosted at Bridging Innovation Week are organized as part of a partnership with the Morgantown Area Partnership, Visit Mountaineer Country CVB, and WVU. For representatives with the West Virginia Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, both the competitions and the weeklong networking opportunities are considered a chance to build a pipeline of creative business minds in the Mountain State.
“You get the right people in the right room, they’re going to collide with each other, we hope, and make those connections,” said St. Clair. “So let’s say I’m bringing in a bunch of investors and policymakers, and then we mix in the entrepreneurs, those folks are going to run into each other, and they’re going to have conversations.”