“Ultimately, they're job creators,” Jeff said. “These early stage companies may not seem like much when they're two, three people, but ultimately, that's where most of the jobs are created.”
During Wednesday’s competition, four tech entrepreneurs did their best to convince a panel of judges that they deserved the winnings.
Chelsea Rogers, the founder of CardFlow Financial, created a credit card consolidation platform that automatically allocates payments equally.
“I'm proud to be Mississippi-based, born and raised, and have this company based out of Mississippi,” she said.
Rogers believes her system offers a better way for consumers to manage debt of multiple cards.
“The minimum payment is going to be automatically suggested within the app,” she said. “If users choose a different strategy, like Avalanche or Snowball, our logic will help them choose which card to pay down faster based on the balance or based on that APR.”
There was also a carbon resin company. Ernesto Borrego, CEO and co-founder of Hand Technologies, appreciated the potential access to venture groups and resource investments.
“Being a Mississippi-based company, I think it's important to connect with the whole ecosystem here, all the other entrepreneurs, the startups, the work that's being done,” he said. “Obviously, we're always looking for money, especially right now where we have a round that's open.”
His company produces high-performance resins that can be used in a variety of products and equipment, including drones.
“I'll say it's unique to the country and to the world,” he said. “I think we're arguably providing the highest performance carbon precursor in the world. Although, it gets competitive and other countries don't want to disclose their technologies. We certainly think that we have the best technology. Certainly in the country.”
George Banzhaf is co-founder of digital forest management platform, TreeTracker.
“Oh my gosh, this competition was so nerve wracking, but I'm so glad I did it,” he said. “Innovate Mississippi has been a really great resource for us. We've been talking with them for two years to help us not only take our vision of a great product into science, but how do you turn that into a smart business and be able to get investors?”
Attorney Lawrence Blackmon co-founded LegalEase - an AI-powered legal assistant that helps users get their criminal records expunged.
“With record clearing as our entry into the market, we're helping people who have blemishes on their criminal record that are eligible to be expunged, we're helping them to clear their record without using an attorney,” he said.
Blackmon says with LegalEase, it’ll only cost users $150. He hoped to use the competition prize to grow his company.
“Every dollar counts when you're building a company. Obviously, the networking is great,” he said. “The opportunity to refine your pitch is always great, but there's $15,000 at stake here. We are a startup company and we're building. So we need as much inbound cash as possible to help us scale this company to its full potential.”
In the end, the competition could only have one winner. Blackmon and his co-founder Roger Roman won the cash prize. The company has plans to expand to five additional states over the next few weeks: California, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, and Maryland.
