Flywheel puts student entrepreneurs center stage in first-ever student pitch competition

WENATCHEE — Students and startup founders from across Washington gathered in Wenatchee this week as the Flywheel Investment Conference expanded its focus on entrepreneurship with the event’s first-ever student pitch competition, held May 20 at Pybus Public Market.

The student competition was part of the broader three-day Flywheel conference, which also included a Latino Founder Day on May 19 and the annual early-stage investment competition on May 21.

Hosted by NCW Tech Alliance, the new student-focused program brought high school and college entrepreneurs into the region’s growing innovation ecosystem, not as observers, but as founders presenting ideas before judges, investors and established business leaders.

“What we tell young people about what they are capable of, what we tell students that they can do with their ideas, they believe,” NCW Tech Alliance CEO Sue Kane said during opening remarks. “This is the first time that we’re giving them access to the relationships and the connections and the ideas and the professional networking that it takes to take an idea and turn it into a company.”

Throughout the day, speakers repeatedly returned to the same idea: innovation in rural communities depends on creating spaces where students feel encouraged to experiment, take risks and continue building even when ideas evolve or fail.

“We need those ideas,” Kane later told attendees. “You belong here.”

The competition featured founders ranging from high school students to graduate researchers, with ventures focused on athletics, healthcare technology, sustainability and software development.

Central Washington University student Cariann Bryant earned the Judges’ Choice Award and a $2,500 prize for Virtual Track Club, an online coaching and recruiting platform designed to help track and field athletes access affordable year-round training, technical coaching and recruiting guidance outside traditional club systems.

Cascade High School junior Elliot Tiegel of Leavenworth received the Audience Choice Award for OhmLife Insoles, a concept designed to convert kinetic energy generated through walking, hiking and running into electricity capable of charging phones, GPS units and other small devices.

Other student founders included Renee Davis of BioBead and University of Washington graduate student Suzanne O’Kelley, co-founder of Crosshatch, a software platform intended to help product teams organize customer feedback, development decisions and AI-assisted workflows.

The event also featured presentations and fireside discussions from established founders and regional innovators, including Dopl Technologies CEO Ryan James, OneCourt co-founder Jerred Mace and iPro Building Services founder Edwin Eaton.

James, whose healthcare robotics company won the 2024 Flywheel Investment Competition, described the years of uncertainty and setbacks that led Dopl to pivot away from its original concept after discovering the technology could not safely function in the rural hospitals it hoped to serve.

“Our mission is not about cardiac catheter ablation,” James said. “It’s about on-demand specialty care everywhere.”

He later distilled the lesson into a line that became something of an unofficial theme for the day.

“The only way to lose this game is to stop playing,” he said.

Mace spoke about OneCourt’s work developing tactile sports broadcasts for blind and visually impaired fans, while Eaton reflected on building a commercial cleaning company from a college side job into a business operating across 10 states.

Chelan County PUD Energy Management Engineer Jim White also highlighted the work of Student Energy Management, or SEM, students participating in Flywheel. White said Wenatchee High School students helped reduce energy consumption at the school by 50%, saving the district roughly $109,000 while bringing the building into compliance with Washington’s clean building standards without capital expenditures.

Rather than focusing solely on venture capital or startup culture, much of the day centered on mentorship, collaboration and long-term community investment, the idea that entrepreneurship can be cultivated locally rather than imported from larger cities.

As the event concluded, Kane encouraged students and founders alike to continue building relationships beyond the competition itself.

“You are not allowed to quit,” she said. “Even if the idea that you’re making right now is not the home run.”

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media