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2025 EntreFEST distributes $15,000 to Iowa entrepreneurs with first-ever pitch competition
Black Earth Gardens, a regenerative farm for underserved and low-income communities in Linn and Johnson counties, took first place
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CEDAR RAPIDS — Close to 100 young and budding entrepreneurs and business owners gathered at the Olympic South Side Theater and later Big Grove Brewery in Cedar Rapids for EntreFEST, Iowa’s foremost entrepreneur conference, Friday.
The two-day conference started Wednesday night with an opening-night networking party before two days structured with speakers and informative breakout sessions providing guidance on marketing, workplace diversity, brand growth, and more.
Friday, however, featured EntreFEST’s first-ever pitch competition, where five startups competed for first, second, and third place, as well as a people’s choice award. The winners received $7,500, $3,500, $1,000, and $3,000, respectively.
The first EntreFEST was hosted in Cedar Falls in 2008. Since then, events have been held across Iowa, including in Ames, Des Moines and Iowa City.
This year marks the fourth time, excluding a remote year during the COVID-19 pandemic, the event has been hosted in Cedar Rapids by NewBoCo, a nonprofit dedicated to economic and small business growth in New Bohemia and Cedar Rapids as a whole.
Iowa Finance Authority and Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham opened Friday with a presentation in which she praised Iowa for its economic prowess and small business progress.
Durham criticized Wallethub’s 2025 report ranking Iowa as having the worst economy of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Iowa, being among the top producers of crops like corn and soybeans, was not accurately portrayed in the report, among other things, she said in her speech.
Pitch contest brings five entrepreneurs’ ideas before judges
The conference’s pitch competition — and dinner at Big Grove — closed the event, and was designed to support the spirit of startups and provide much-needed capital for business growth.
Adriana Johnson, director of community impact and belonging at Hy-Vee, which sponsored the pitch competition, said the event achieves a planned, shared goal between Hy-Vee and NewBoCo, to increase investment in local Iowa business.
Five startups, selected out of 35 applicants based on projected profitability and strength of concept, presented at the pitch competition.
The five finalists were:
- Black Earth Gardens, a Cedar Rapids regenerative agriculture farm serving low-income and underestimated communities;
- CaptuRE Recycle, LLC, a firm designing plastic recycling innovations from Mason City;
- LSF Medical Solutions, a lung-disease biotech research firm based in Iowa City;
- No-Sparc, a firm creating gender-inclusive welding caps based in Ames; and
- Tumbleweed, an estate planning firm that assists with end of life insurance, finance, and family issues from Des Moines.
Each firm was represented by a company member who was given three minutes to pitch their business, followed by two minutes of questions from a panel of judges.
Mari Hunt Wassink, owner and operator of Black Earth Farms, went home with the $7,500 first place prize. Wassink is glad she and others have the opportunity to network and grow their businesses in an active community, she said.
“I’m really grateful for these kinds of opportunities to kind of help people be able to launch their businesses at an early stage,” Wassink said, “when we’re not necessarily as competitive for grants or things like that.”
The second place winner was Boluwarin Ojo, creator of No-Sparc. She also won the people’s choice award and went home with $6,500.
Tumbleweed CEO Paul H. Richardson Jr. left with the third place prize of $3,000.
The pitch competition is intended to help entrepreneurs secure capital to grow their business, capital which Friday’s EntreFEST keynote speaker and No Limbits Founder and CEO Erica Cole said is harder to come by in 2025.
“Access to capital is very different now than it was then,” she said in an interview with The Gazette. “I would take even smaller bets [now] than I took at the time.”
A University of Iowa graduate and entrepreneur, Cole founded No Limbits, a disability-accessible clothing brand, in 2019 after losing her leg a year earlier. The business began as an idea for the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business startup incubator pitch competition and grew from there, and Cole has gone as far as pitching on ABC’s Shark Tank. She also was on the panel of judges during Friday’s EntreFEST pitch competition.
Cole made one point clear during her keynote speech: what kept her and No Limbits going through various business crises — between quality control misprints and crucial inventory stuck in transit during the Suez Canal blockage in 2021 — was community. Like-minded, similarly strained entrepreneurs in like positions kept her grounded and able to keep moving, she said.
“Anytime we faced one of these crises,” Cole said, “it was another entrepreneur that talked us through. Specifically, it was another entrepreneur that was building in the same or similar stage to us.”
The environment that helped Cole soldier forward as she grew her business and made her feel more comfortable with the wild highs and lows that come with doing so, is the same one NewBoCo hopes to build with EntreFEST, year after year.
Comments: 641-691-8669 or evan.watson@thegazette.com
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