This content is sponsored by Blue North.
Isaiah Kelly was a junior at Northern Kentucky University in 2019 when he started customizing sneakers in his dorm room.
That’s when he heard about NKU’s INKUBATOR program, a 12-week business accelerator for students in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, housed in the Haile College of Business.
“He gave a phenomenal pitch to get in, he was accepted and we challenged him to switch to a B2B model,” said Zac Strobl, the center’s director. “His first client was St. Elizabeth – he asked if they wanted custom sneakers and they did.”
Kelly went on to compete in a national business plan competition and was one of 30 entrepreneurs selected. Smoove Creations works with businesses across the region – and the country – to create custom sneakers that he prints.
“He is consistently building his business,” Strobl said.
Kelly is a shining example of the entrepreneurial spirit in Northern Kentucky held up by NKU’s program designed to cultivate students’ business ideas.
The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s reputation is one of the reasons it was selected as a financial subgrantee of Blue North through the Kentucky Innovation Hubs. As a subgrantee, center is a formal partner of Blue North, extending their reach to mutual support entrepreneurs across Northern Kentucky.
Nationally, entrepreneurship programs like those at NKU aren’t uncommon – but partnerships like those with Blue North is what truly makes programming in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship special.
“We have had amazing results for the size of our university,” Strobl said. “Business startup statistics are high for the number of students going through the program.”
In the past 10 years, the center has launched 51 businesses. And in just the last five years, it has launched 27.
“Our class of 2022 is impressive,” Strobl said. “They are entrepreneur majors or minors and in that class alone, 13 businesses have been started. The program has been years in the making.”
The INKUBATOR – which is one of the top five accelerators in North America – continues to thrive, Strobl said, because the focus is always on the students.
“We have a healthy startup community and I think that’s why we’ve had success,” Strobl said. “I have to give credit to the students.”
Many of those students don’t come from backgrounds of wealth and have haid to make their own way. And while the school taps into those students’ potential, in the end, they’re the ones who do it.
“It’s them being successful,” Strobl said. “We are just creating the avenues, connections, and resources outside of here.”
Resources like Dave Knox, Blue North’s executive director. Knox has started a new fellowship partnership with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and brings his years of startup experience directly to the students he works with.
One example of how the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Blue North are working together to elevate the NKY entrepreneur community can be found in their new fellowship program that launched in spring 2023.
“The ability for Blue North to connect these dots and further connections and opportunities for recent alumni and students,” Strobl said, “this doesn’t work without that. Blue North is a vital and huge asset.”
Each year, two NKU students start the fellowship in the final seven weeks of their Junior year. As part of that fellowship, the students work full time with Blue North until they graduate the following spring. Over the course of the 14-month internship, students experience the entrepreneurial community from a variety of viewpoints: from startup founder to venture capitalist to community leader.
The two inaugural NKU Blue North fellows are Reese Watson, serving as an ecosystem building fellow, and Hayden Turley, serving as a design fellow.
“It was a dream internship for me,” Watson said. “I really like the small business feel. I tried corporate but I didn’t love it. The small team at Blue North – I just love it. It is more personable and motivating, and your job is important.”
Watson has welcomed the challenge, which has given her additional skills to navigate each day.
Buoyed by everything she’s learned at NKU and Blue North, Watson said her future absolutely lies in the entrepreneurial realm.
“I would really like to be a business owner working with startups,” she said. “That’s what’s so inspiring about being with entrepreneurs. They create something different.”
The connections that the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship creates for students with local leaders in the startup community has also been crucial for Hayden Turley’s career trajectory.
She is a graphic design fellow at Blue North and a visual communication design major at NKU with a minor in entrepreneurial studies. Turley has been able to interact with several local entrepreneurs on their branding needs – an experience she wouldn’t have been able to be part of without the partnership between the university and Blue North.
“I love working with small businesses and I love design,” Turley said. “The Blue North Fellowship was just another step up from what I was doing at CIE.”
Some of the most impactful things she has done include sitting in with Covington Creates, where local creative directors get together to think through their processes.
“It’s a win for me to be part of that conversation,” Turley said.
Blue North has been critical in helping Turley figure out where she wants to be in the next five years: being a designer at an agency.
Looking to the future, leaders at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship say partnerships like the one with Blue North will propel even more creative minds into the Northern Kentucky entrepreneurial scene.
“I just think it can’t be overstated what Blue North is doing for the startup community,” Strobl said. “To continue growth, we have to have that level of resources in NKY.”
While many things Blue North has been working on have been covered in the news, what’s not making headlines is the way the startup is connecting and growing the startup community.
“I can sense an increase in startup energy,” Strobl said. “This is vital for it all to work. The more opportunities there are for aspiring entrepreneurs, the more jobs and opportunities there are for them as well. Blue North is pushing the envelope and wants to see a difference in the area.”
