Northern Kentucky University Haile College of Business entrepreneurship student John Wharton is leveraging his background in lawn care and support from The INKUBATOR accelerator program to build a technology startup.
As a teenager growing up in Boone County, Wharton would mow his neighbors’ lawns on the side, leading him to start his own lawn care business. This laid the groundwork for his company, Core Precision Lawns. While mowing lawns, Wharton took the time to observe the intricacies of the industry, including labor expenditures and the quoting process.
Despite his enjoyment of mowing, Wharton believed he had a business idea with greater potential. Through encouragement from a judging panel at the 2024 Kentucky Collegiate Pitch Competition, Wharton decided to leverage his lawn care knowledge as the basis for a new technology company.
Wharton and his team are designing an app for lawn care companies to generate quotes more quickly by using satellite imagery to automate pricing. Business owners can enter an address to view satellite images, calculate square footage, and create a quote without needing to visit the property. This way, lawn care companies can reduce the time and effort spent on manual measurements, essentially digitizing the quoting process.
However, running and scaling a startup presented unfamiliar challenges for Wharton. Zac Strobl, director of Northern Kentucky University’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, suggested Wharton apply to the school’s INKUBATOR program. This two-week business accelerator helps students and alumni transform an idea into a viable business.
Strobl said the structured, 12-week summer program is designed to flesh out the business idea, using university resources and intellectual capital to craft a sustainable business model.
“Our goal is to help them scale, meaning growth,” Strobl said. “It just means, how can we help them be innovative and do things differently than what everyone else is doing? Actually, like building a sustainable business model.”
The INKUBATOR’s curriculum focuses on startup methodology and business model development, while providing mentorship from experienced professionals. Participants attend workshops, build cross-disciplinary teams, and pitch their startups to investors during a Demo Day.
The program is nationally recognized for its commitment to growing young entrepreneurs. In February 2025, NKU announced that The INKUBATOR received the National Model University Accelerator/Incubator Program Award from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, marking it as one of the top programs in the country.
Wharton, who is currently going through the program, told LINK nky that INKUBATOR has provided him critical access to mentorship throughout the time-consuming process of starting a business.
“One of the biggest draws to this program as a whole for me was the mentorship aspect of it,” Wharton said. “I mean, I have some good contacts that I can reach out to, but I just don’t want to bother them, because I know what they’re doing and how busy they are and their lives, and this was a good segue for me to naturally meet people through this program that are also business owners and entrepreneurs that have started multiple businesses.”
Oftentimes, young entrepreneurs are saddled with juggling critical responsibilities to ensure the business’s survival. The process can be challenging and isolating. Wharton highlighted how The INKUBATOR has provided him with mentors who not only grasp the demands of running a startup but also offer valuable operational insights.
“For me, the big aspect of this program is the mentorship, getting to talk with these people, learn from them, and also walk them through the challenges that I’m experiencing,” he said. “Saying, ‘hey, this is happening right now? Here’s what I’ve done. Can you kind of help guide me or give me some advice?’”
INKUBATOR graduate Gary Darna, managing partner at Micromerch in Cincinnati, said one of his favorite aspects of the program is that participants hear from past cohort members who have benefited from the program’s curriculum.
“You’re helping people prevent some of the same silly mistakes that maybe you made in your entrepreneurial career,” Darna said. “That’s really important to me, because oftentimes in starting businesses, like I said, it’s a lonely journey, and especially if you don’t have a co-founder.”
NKU’s INKUBATOR 2025 cohort runs for 12 weeks, beginning on May 12 and finishing up with Demo Day and final presentations on August 1, 2025.
For Strobl, INKUBATOR has clear benefits. By integrating young founders into Northern Kentucky’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, they can utilize existing resources while simultaneously establishing a framework for their future contributions to the program.
“The whole purpose is to introduce them to the entrepreneurship community,” he said. “Also, our whole community is there to support the entrepreneurs.”
