$222,500 Award Will Enhance 1ST50K Startup Competition and Introduce New Program in Partnership with Southeast Missouri State University
The Missouri Technology Corporation1 (MTC) recently selected Marquette Tech as one of their award recipients for their Missouri Building Entrepreneurial Capacity highly competitive grant competition. The agency will make a $222,500 investment that will provide a regional focus to the 1ST50K startup competition (for which applications are officially open2) and also provide support to launch what will be 1ST5K, a new student-focused startup competition in partnership with Southeast Missouri State University.3 The grant is being matched dollar for dollar by local private donations to support the project.
The $225,000 award will enhance 1ST50K, a startup competition in its 5th year of operation, that has previously attracted startups from all over the world to Cape Girardeau where they operate for at least a year in order to receive an equity-free grant to scale their business. 1ST50K has awarded more than $350,000 in equity-free grants to startups that have gone on to generate more than $5 million in revenue and created more than 30 jobs since its inception in 2015.
In 2019, the 1ST50K competition committee shifted their focus to regional startups in Southeast Missouri and awarded Nathan Holmes, the founder of Pumptrakr4 and Sho Rust, the founder of Sho.AI,5 two locally-based companies. As part of their $50,000 grant award, both founders receive regular mentorship from entrepreneurs and investors, additional opportunities for fundraising, and membership at Codefi. The shift has already proven successful as both companies are off to a great start. PumpTrakr is already proving to be invaluable to farmers throughout the Delta and Sho.ai is working with The Center on Rural Innovation’s Opportunity6 Zone Innovation Fund to roll out their national expansion.
The regional focus continues with the upcoming competition. Applications are officially open for the 2020 round of 1ST50K through May 31. Teams are invited to submit their application here. Startups that apply by April 30 will receive additional feedback to improve their application ahead of the final deadline on May 31. Finalists are invited to Cape Girardeau in late July for Pitch Day to meet other participants and the local startup community before making the case to be selected for an award.
“MTC has had its support from the state dramatically decreased with this administration, so we are lucky to even be considered for this opportunity,” said Chris Carnell,7 co-founder at Codefi8 and Executive Director of Marquette Tech. “The impact this program has had on our region has been tremendous. The results speak for themselves, but we need help advocating to our state leaders that these initiatives are incredibly important if we want to compete economically in the future.”
The Missouri Technology Corporation is a public-private partnership created by the Missouri General Assembly to promote entrepreneurship and foster the growth of new and emerging high-tech companies. MTC’s mission is to provide leadership and make strategic investments that help entrepreneurs create and grow technology-based Missouri businesses.
Submissions for the competitive grant process were evaluated on the quality of the submission and a demonstrated likelihood to achieve the following outcomes in Missouri:
- Enhance the capacity of Missouri's startup ecosystem
- Increase research, commercialization, and capital investment funding
- Structurally accelerate the commercialization of scientific discovery
- Creates sustainable, high-paying, private-sector jobs
- Build a sustainable community resource for entrepreneurs
- Avoid redundancy in favor of supportive or novel initiatives
- Strengthen one or more of MTC's targeted high-tech clusters.