Jared graduated with his degree in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurial studies from Black Hills State University. It was there where he began and founded his company Seam Readers. Seam Readers is a SaaS company that was built off of an idea that dates back to the 1980s when Founder Dennis Tiefenthaler was playing professional baseball. The company creates, trains and tests users on one of the most important skills players can have, pitch recognition. They do this with their patent pending technology that replicates how baseball and softball pitches look to the human eye within a mobile app

Gino Wickman is the author of the bestselling book, Traction, and is passionate about helping people get what they want from their businesses. To fulfill that passion, Wickman created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®), a holistic system that, when implemented in an organization, helps leaders run better businesses, get better control, have better life balance, and gain more traction—with the entire organization advancing together as a healthy, functional, and cohesive team. Wickman spends most of his time as an EOS Implementer®, working hands-on with the leadership teams of entrepreneurial companies to help them fully implement EOS in their organizations.

Brian Rupert is a dad, husband, entrepreneur, firefighter and community builder that believes in the power of connectivity and relationships. As an organizer of Startup Black Hills and Startup Weekend Black Hills his mission is to help ideas come to life and support entrepreneurs in their journey towards world domination.

Fomeno is a platform that offers the simplest thrifting experience yet! Co-founders Ashlynn Atwood, Payton Ryz, and Brigit Blote created the company in order to combat the negative environmental impacts of the fashion industry. The team of three competed with this business idea in the 2020 Hult Prize Business Global Entrepreneurship competition where they were selected to represent the United States with Fomeno! Out of 300,000 global applications, the students from the University of South Dakota made the final 10 teams and were recipients of $100,000 in seed capital. Since then, the team has gone on to raise $150,00 from the Falls Angels Fund out of Sioux Falls and are preparing for the official launch of Fomeno

Ryan Pletan, founder of Smart Technologies, spent the 2000’s outsourcing hundreds of innovative products across Asia. In the 2010’s, he and his brother bootstrapped a fintech company that today works with billion-dollar enterprises such as Ashley Home Store (DSG) and Berkshire Hathaway (NFM). Currently, he and his team are developing a breakthrough continuous screen-sharing technology to serve the booming work-from-home software market. Ryan holds an MBA from USD and is an emotional intelligence (EQ) evangelist with a weakness for electric guitars and loud amplifiers

Hydrolyst was founded in 2019 when Kelsey Fitzgerald and Kirstie Gildemeister, founding members, were discussing energy storage issues Kelsey was facing with his off grid tiny house. The solution to his and other’s energy limitations can be found in hydrogen fuel cells. With global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, Hydrogen power is proving to be a strong alternative fuel source to fossil fuel energy. At Hydrolyst we are using a unique coating technology and developing a patent pending process to produce a superior electrocatalyst. This process creates micro-welds between functional materials and the substrate they are coated on. Additionally, our electrocatalyst material can be used in corrosive environments which expands future possibilities for fuel cell technology and application. Our process also has a low environmental footprint and can be made scalable to fit various application requirements.

Hydrolyst was founded in 2019 when Kelsey Fitzgerald and Kirstie Gildemeister, founding members, were discussing energy storage issues Kelsey was facing with his off grid tiny house. The solution to his and other’s energy limitations can be found in hydrogen fuel cells. With global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, Hydrogen power is proving to be a strong alternative fuel source to fossil fuel energy. At Hydrolyst we are using a unique coating technology and developing a patent pending process to produce a superior electrocatalyst. This process creates micro-welds between functional materials and the substrate they are coated on. Additionally, our electrocatalyst material can be used in corrosive environments which expands future possibilities for fuel cell technology and application. Our process also has a low environmental footprint and can be made scalable to fit various application requirements.

Over the last two years Mr. Gagne has been playing the roles of cheerleader, mentor, consultant and investor in regional software startups and has been committed to building out a technology ecosystem in our region. Prior to that he was with Concur Technologies, a B2B software company that saw rapid growth over a 20 year period. He joined Concur in 1998 when the company was 60 employees and $10 million in revenue and left in 2017 with annual revenue at $1.7 billion and over 8000 employees. His last position was head of Global Products and was responsible for product strategy, development and innovation of Concur Expense, Concur Invoice and the company's analytics solutions. Mr. Gagne started at Concur in engineering and went on to serve in leadership positions in a variety of functional areas, including sales/marketing, account management, customer service, product management and data services. Prior to joining Concur, Mr. Gagne was Director of Consulting for GSSI, an international services business, and co-founder of MAPP, a provider of financial risk assessment software for banks.

Jim was born and raised in the Black Hills and has 35+ years of international project management experience with the Army Corp of Engineers and ExxonMobil. Over his career he has lived in and managed large projects and operations in Germany, Colombia, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, and various locations in the US.

Jim has a degree in Civil Engineering from South Dakota School of Mines (SDSMT) and has completed work towards an MBA at the University of Wyoming, University of Houston, and Rutgers.

Since retiring back to the Black Hills in 2008 he has been actively involved at SDSMT helping commercialize technology, with the Black Hills Regional Angel Fund(s) providing early funding, and working closely with several start-up companies creating job opportunities in the Rapid City Area