Northern Kentucky University hosts many student entrepreneurs and young business ideas. The INKUBATOR program—cleverly named to incorporate NKU—is a 12-week business accelerator open to any student or alumni. Throughout the program, business leaders and mentors provide advice, resources and potential funding to entrepreneurs.
Zac Strobl, director of the INKUBATOR, said when the program began in 2012, NKU was one of the first university accelerators in the country. The program runs through the summer and is specifically targeted at individuals who are serious about starting a business from scratch, or those who have already started a business but want to take it to the next level, Strobl said.
Over the years, 76 teams have come through the accelerator and 41 businesses have started. Of the businesses started, 67% survived after two years, Strobl reported.
In early 2024, NKU’s program was a finalist for the national Model University Accelerator/Incubator award, sponsored by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
The Northerner sat down with four distinct participants in the INKUBATOR to talk about their experiences and see where their business is now.
Isaiah Kelley- Smoove Creations
When Isaiah Kelley began designing custom sneakers in his NKU dorm room in 2016, he had no idea he would be designing shoes for companies like the Cincinnati Bengals and Proctor and Gamble a few short years later.
Kelley, who is from Oldham County right outside Louisville, “became a sneakerhead” after working at Shoe Carnival in high school. “They have dad shoes, not fun shoes,” Kelley joked. But the experience gave him an affinity for footwear that he still has today.
Starting out by painting designs on sneakers for individual clients, Kelley saw how he could turn his passion into a side hustle at the least. While studying computer informatics at NKU, he saw how promoting his work on social media led to more and more interested clients.
While sitting in a classroom in Griffin Hall, Kelley recalls Zac Strobl walking in to tell the students about the INKUBATOR program. “[Strobl] described it as a program that helps take business ideas and make them into viable companies. I knew I was really passionate about what I was doing, and custom footwear in general,” Kelley said. “I knew I wanted to take it to the next level and be serious about it.”
From there, Kelley applied to the INKUBATOR and was accepted, beginning a journey to turn his side hustle into a high-achieving business.
During the program, Smoove Creations was truly formed. Mentors and staff in the INKUBATOR helped Kelley form a business team and determine his target market. They even developed a business model where Kelley would pair up with other Norse from the School of the Arts to make a client’s design come to life, sharing in the profit.
Kelley attributed much of his business success to the INKUBATOR and the opportunities that followed. He gained national attention for Smoove Creations, being voted one of the Top 30 Student Entrepreneurs in the nation.
Nowadays, Smoove Creations is a five-person team which operates out of an on-campus office in Campbell Hall. The business is finalizing a patent which gives them exclusive rights to print directly onto sneakers, after Smoove Creations created the scale to do so. The business also focuses on creating custom designs for corporations rather than individuals. Kelley said he realized that with a company like Proctor and Gamble, he can create the same design for 500 company employees rather than 500 different designs for unique individuals.
Reese Watson – Sitter Link
If Reese Watson’s experiences in the INKUBATOR program and working as a babysitter have taught her anything, it’s that “connection builds trust.” The senior finance and entrepreneurship major imagines her business concept tying social connections conveniently into the hunt for the perfect sitter.
Watson participated in the INKUBATOR during the summer of 2023 with her business Sitter Link. Watson describes the idea as a babysitting platform that allows parents and guardians looking for a sitter to find mutual connections between available sitters and people they already know. Picture an app similar to LinkedIn that lets you click on a babysitter’s profile and see if anyone you know has connections to that person.
She said in her experience babysitting agencies that recommend baby sitters to parents vet candidates to ensure that they’re trustworthy. Her model would take this a step further so that caretakers can be confident that their children are in good hands.
“My first time babysitting, each family through the agency, they didn’t know who I was. I had never met them. I think maybe they had exchanged something like over the phone. But there was no personal connection, which that’s where my model would be a lot different,” said Watson.
Watson said her journey into the INKUBATOR program started with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Business Elevator Pitch Contest in the spring of 2023. She pitched a coffee shop idea at that competition, but she pivoted her business idea to Sitter Link for her INKUBATOR program application after talking to program director Zac Strobl.
She had spent the spring semester developing her idea for Sitter Link in a course called Idea Validation. When she was taking that course, she was working as a babysitter on the side. “I knew I wanted my business to be around babysitting as much as what I was doing.”
“It was through the INKUBATOR that we started to identify more problems of like, what what the real problem was, like finding connection between babysitters and parents, which I feel like I wouldn’t have discovered if it weren’t just like having a bunch of different conversations with different people,” said Watson.
Watson is set to graduate in the fall of 2024. She said that the growth of Sitter Link is on the backburner for now while she inches toward graduation. She said this summer she may continue developing the business, and that she could see herself growing it gradually on the side to hedge against the risks and responsibilities of diving head-deep into entrepreneurship.
“I don’t have to be like a full blown full-time business owner. I can just do this on the side… And then, like letting it grow naturally, because I think that’s the hardest part is just actually starting it,” she said.
Andre Gonzalez – Sonder Media
Sonder Media is all about creating wedding films which encapsulate the best day of a couple’s life, said founder Andre Gonzalez.
Officially started in October 2022, the business works to create a product that is more intricate and detailed than a standard wedding video. By focusing on the sounds of special moments and storytelling abilities, Gonzalez said he hopes to create an end result that will be a family heirloom.
Gonzalez got his start working on social media and video editing for a Northern Kentucky gym. In the midst of building relationships with some of the gym members and creating promotional content, he was asked how he might feel about shooting video at one of the member’s weddings. Shocked but excited, Gonzalez said yes.
“I never knew that videography was a highly sought-out service for weddings,” Gonzalez recalled. “But I was just overwhelmed with joy with someone considering me to do that for them.”
Showing up to his first wedding, Gonzalez brought all the gear he had: one handheld camera.
“It was basically a music video,” the videographer said of his first time shooting a wedding, since he didn’t have any microphones to pick up natural sound from the day.
Since then, he has expanded to include more gear like tripods and microphones, as well as typically bringing along a partner to help shoot video.
Gonzalez graduated from NKU in spring 2023 after studying entrepreneurship and marketing. He participated in the INKUBATOR with his good friend Cole Martin, but Sonder Media was actually not a part of the picture at the time. When the pair took part in the accelerator, their business idea was a Christian gym, but they soon realized the investment that would be needed to make the idea come to life.
After the business concept for Sonder Media got rolling, the business was a part of a couple pitch contests, and won.
Gonzalez is now devoting more time to the business as he approaches the one-year anniversary of his graduation. Sonder Media will take to the sea in the coming months, as Gonzalez will go on a wedding cruise to the Bahamas to shoot a film. His goal is to keep expanding outside the Greater Cincinnati area and travel with couples on their big day.
Continuing to build a portfolio to show potential clients is important to Gonzalez, and he believes with each experience the films are getting better and better.
LeAnn McAbee – Girly Pumps
LeAnn McAbee envisions Girly Pumps being a safe space for women to exercise by cutting through judgements and harassment that she says women often face at gyms.
McAbee applied for the INKUBATOR after earning second place at KY Pitch–now known as Collegiate Pitch–a business pitch competition where entrepreneurs can get feedback on their ideas and vie for prize money. Her second place win earned her $3,500, which she’s using to pay for certifications in personal training and women’s fitness, she said.
McAbee said the concept was inspired by her friend’s experiences being routinely harassed at the gym. While developing the business idea, she realized it’s an issue that many women encounter.
“I kind of took her story and realized that there was a really big problem. I started talking to more people about the issue and realized it’s not just her, it’s not just me and there’s countless women at different college campuses that feel uncomfortable being in the gym,” said McAbee.
She said that the idea for an all-women gym is one she’s been mulling since her freshman year. After talking to local gyms, she realized she could make a dent in the problem by promulgating policies and mindsets that foster a safe space for women to work out.
“I want to promote a safe space for women to work out to help advocate for sexual harassment that happens in the fitness community…Women feel very uncomfortable in the gym and feel like they can’t try new things, so I want to create a space where they can try different things,” said McAbee.
She also has her own experiences feeling singled out in the gym, she said. Having been a four-sport athlete in high school, her teen years revolved around fitness. When she came to college, she lost the regimen that she had become acclimated to. She started going to the gym “religiously,” until a knee surgery foiled her consistency. When she returned to the gym after several months of recovery, she said the injury limited her physically.
“It’s very intimidating. Being there and then people coming up and talking to me while I’m working out–how my workouts don’t look right or how my form looks off, not knowing my body and my story, that kind of just set in stone that that’s what I wanted to do,” she said.
McAbee is a senior entrepreneurship major with minors in business management and business administration. She’s taking a break on developing the business while she focuses on graduating and passing her fitness certifications. Once she has her certifications, she plans to start training clients under the Girly Pumps brand as a side hustle with the long term goal of growing the business into a brick and mortar gym.