By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

Last
week six area residents were presented with the opportunity to share their business
ideas with a panel of judges at Grow Hays’ Pitch It event.

Six
ideas were presented during the event at BriefSpace, the Grow Hays-operated
co-working space in downtown Hays.

“It
was a great event. It really came off better than I ever would have thought,”
said Doug Williams, Grow Hays executive director. “We had some great
participants and some young people with good ideas and good work ethics. And it
was really great to see.”

“The
event was a competition for prospective startups or existing business
owners to present their business idea to three judges and an audience,” according
to a release from Grow Hays. “The six ‘pitches’ consisted of a five-minute oral
presentation followed by three minutes of Q and A similar to a ‘Shark Tank’
presentation.”

Judges
included Network Kansas’ Christy Preston, Kansas Small Business Development
Center’s Laurie Pieper and Ameriprise Financial Services’ Michael Schaeffer.

“Prizes were funded by the Robert E. Schmidt Entrepreneurship
Series sponsored by Robert E. and Patricia A. Schmidt Foundation and Network
Kansas,” according to Grow Hays.

Initially, two cash prizes were set to be awarded, but during the event, Network Kansas
decided to include a third-place prize of $250. 

Taking
first place was Trevor Fischer with his idea for TKO, Total Knock Out Fighting
Arcade. As envisioned, the business would be a location that
includes training support and a space for those interested in learning and
developing arcade fighting game skills.

He
was awarded a $1,000 cash prize.

While
his idea came out on top, Fisher said he only developed it for the event recently.

“I didn’t
really know about this until about a month and a half ago, and I kind of had a
vague idea of something, I think, could really have a positive impact in the community, especially for the high school and college-age people,” he said.

Fisher
said arcade fighting games have helped bring him closer to friends and
associates and could be a benefit to others.

“That’s
just something I wanted to expand on in the Hays community and give people an
opportunity to get that sense of community and feeling love, improving, and
just grow stronger together,” Fisher said.

And while
the idea took the top prize, launching the concept would require a bit more
work.

“I might need a little bit more for what I’m looking to do, but it’s a good start,” Fisher said. “A $1,000 isn’t really anything to
scoff at, so here’s hoping that one day my idea comes to fruition.”

Taking the second-place prize was another conceptual idea, RanchEd.
Presented by Tanner Werth, the platform would be a system to help ag producers
connect to resources.

Third place was awarded to Wyatt Kirkpatrick and Carter
Lang with Pressure Pros, an already existing business in Hays.

While the competition was open to the general public, all participants
were high-school to college age.

“That’s what’s really kind of
cool when you see this stuff, as you’ve got some young people who are actually
out there doing things,” Williams said. “A couple of guys who had a power washing
business that is out there, doing jobs, power washing fences, or driveways, or
whatever it might be.  A lot of them are actually out doing what
they are presenting for

“It’s exciting to
see that as we continue to try and build this culture locally of
entrepreneurship because we feel it’s so important. It’s really great to see that
there are actually kids and people out there doing things, starting businesses
and serving needs within the community.”

Williams said a culture of entrepreneurship
is vital to maintaining a growing and stable area economy.

“When we
look at our community, and we talk about the economic environment today,
really in a lot of places, we really are not in a position to recruit a company
to our community that’s going to employ 200 people,” Williams said. “We just
don’t have the people.”

But when
a business grows organically, it will mold to meet a community’s needs and take
advantage of resources that are available.

“Entrepreneurship
becomes very important because we need to grow our own and have companies that
can start small, and then grow organically over time and add people
incrementally as opposed to these big one-time hits,” Williams said. “We’d love
to have them, but I just don’t know how we would handle these large one-time
hits. Entrepreneurship becomes very important.”

He
added the area is lucky to have resources that create homegrown businesses.

“We’re
very fortunate in Ellis County,” Williams said. “Fort Hays State has a lot of
entrepreneurial type of activities …”