Nüks Nootropics: A Fresh Take on Energy
Written by: Kym Vorhees Raque
All photography in this post is credited to Abdul Sharif Photography
Pictured (left to right): Tim Filiatreau, Joe Crepps, and Gerhardus Olde Loohuis with Nüks Nootropics.
What began as a University of Louisville Innovation Master of Business Administration (IMBA) project for Joe Crepps, Tim Filiatreau, and Gerhardus Olde Loohuis soon became a business. Nüks Nootropics makes nicotine-free nootropic energy pouches that deliver vitamins and clean, steady energy and focus to people looking for an alternative to high-stimulant energy drinks or nicotine products.
“We started out trying to solve how to get Navy submariners to take their vitamins.
Since then, we pivoted and rethought the problem,” said Filiatreau. “Tobacco dip pouches have been using the gums to deliver harmful substances into the bloodstream for decades. We can use the same delivery mechanism for something a little better for the user. We formulated a recipe to include supplements, vitamins, electrolytes, and energy, all in a simple pouch.”
According to Olde Loohuis, the team heard about the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program while at UofL and community networking events around Louisville. He says the program has given the team the opportunity to grow the business, learn to be better business owners, and build connections for future growth.
By Vogt Awards Demo Day, on November 17, the team hopes to have more confidently identified the primary factors determining their product-market fit and learned how to leverage those factors to drive sales growth.
“I hope to learn more about how to grow,” said Filiatreau. “We want to find mentors and advisors to continually improve the product, distribution, sales pipelines, and manufacturing process and grow into a self-sustaining company.”
Olde Loohuis said the Vogt Awards funding will allow a more extensive exploration of their customers to better identify the primary product and branding factors which matter most to them.
The team plans to invest in testing the long-term efficacy of the product by partnering with a local neuropsychologist to explore professional validation of the Nüks Nootropics recipe.
“The exposure from the Vogt Awards and the Community Foundation will help us reach more customers. Nootropics are still not well known amongst everyday people. We fight a lot of stigma being a pouch, even a nicotine-free one. Articles and marketing can bring awareness not only to the product but to our solution,” said Filiatreau.
Interested in learning more about Nüks Nootropics? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day on Tuesday, November 17, at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
Rebar, Reimagined with RebarAI
Pictured: Nimish Mathur, Co-Founder of RebarAI. Not pictured: Sandeep Mathur.
RebarAI is helping concrete contractors cut weeks off their project timelines by using AI to turn engineering plans into accurate 3D models, fabrication bar lists, and field placement drawings in a fraction of the time.
Co-founder Sandeep Mathur has worked in rebar detailing for more than 30 years and experienced firsthand how long it takes to create rebar placement drawings for large buildings and bridges by hand. He and co-founder Nimish Mathur developed RebarAI to save detailers hundreds of hours per project while saving building owners money.
“Building owners don’t earn money until a project is finished, so every week saved has significant value,” said Nimish. “RebarAI streamlines the most time-consuming parts of detailing with built-in checks against industry standards to ensure accuracy.”
As a former Vogt Educational & Leadership Scholarship recipient, Nimish was familiar with the Community Foundation of Louisville and its programs. He says the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program addressed two of the team’s main problems: startup experience and funding. A 10-week program focused on business growth and receiving a non-dilutive funding source to help with upfront costs was perfectly aligned with RebarAI’s needs.
“This has been one of the best decisions for our business,” said Nimish. “We’ve learned about finding product-market fit, financial modeling, unit economics, and much more. The program has also pushed us to talk with more potential customers and to learn from other Kentucky founders – both of which have been invaluable.”
By Vogt Awards Demo Day, on November 17, Nimish and Sandeep hope to have a working product ready and be in a position to launch pilot projects with concrete contractors. They will continue to improve RebarAI based on real-world feedback from these pilot projects and early customers.
Nimish says the Vogt Awards funding will primarily be used to buy hardware and 3D modeling software, as well as pay for AI computing costs needed to build the product.
“We’re most proud of connecting 2D engineering drawings to a 3D model with every bar placed to scale. It’s a hard technical problem, and it has been rewarding to see the progress thus far,” said Nimish.
Interested in learning more about RebarAI? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day Tuesday, November 17, at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
DreamMoney Takes the Complexity Out of Small Business Finance
Pictured: Megan Hale, Founder of DreamMoney.
Solopreneurs, people who organize, manage, and operate a business completely by themselves as a team of one, are more prevalent now than ever before in the United States. Nearly 30 million Americans are solo enterprises accounting for about 82 percent of all U.S. small businesses. While most are highly trained and good at what they do, they often struggle with the financial aspects of owning a business. Megan Hale, founder of DreamMoney, knows just how they feel.
“DreamMoney started because I desperately needed the financial clarity I couldn’t find in a [profit and loss statement], my bank balance, or disjointed spreadsheets,” said Megan. “I was a non-finance solo CEO who needed to understand her numbers while also having to confront my own financial psychology that was getting in the way.”
DreamMoney is a financial modeling platform specifically created for solopreneurs to help them learn and understand their numbers without having to become a finance person. The platform simplifies financial strategy so solo founders can make empowered, strategic decisions to grow their businesses and fund their dreams.
Hale says she was encouraged to apply for the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program because she needed mentorship, guidance and a supportive community of early-stage business founders to support her venture.
She plans to use the $25,000 Vogt Awards funding toward platform development and marketing.
“Making smart, sound, grounded decisions come from making responsive choices vs. reactive ones,” she said. “Our platform is unique in the sense that it will have a financial psychology layer on top of the financial modeling and cash flow management features that are essential for the overall health of a small business. This important addition will help our users triage their business, model different best case and worst-case scenarios, while checking in on their stress level as we help them weigh their next best move.”
By Vogt Awards Demo Day on November 17, she hopes to meet KPIs that will allow her to hire more team members, develop strong partnerships for 2027, and have two or three strong mentors she can turn to as she continues to scale her business.
“We’re intentionally taking a foothold in the solo CEO economy, a growing market and what I believe is the future of small business. We aim to support those solo CEOs with the financial clarity they need to run healthy businesses,” Hale said.
Interested in learning more about DreamMoney? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day on Tuesday, November 17, at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
From Personal Experience to Preventive Medicine: The Story Behind ImprintBio
Pictured: Zach Fowler, Co-Founder of ImprintBio. Not pictured: Joseph Chen, PhD.
More than 40 million Americans suffer from Type II Diabetes. ImprintBio co-founder Zach Fowler witnessed three of his grandparents develop the disease seemingly instantly, leading him and co-founder Joseph Chen, PhD, to design breakthrough technology that provides early detection.
“Each of them experienced their diagnosis as though the disease had appeared overnight, even though we now understand that insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction can develop for years before conventional diagnostic markers become abnormal,” said Fowler. “That experience led me to the intersection of preventive medicine and biomedical engineering. ImprintBio is working to fill that gap by making insulin continuously measurable, so that we can see disease developing rather than simply recognize it after it has arrived.”
ImprintBio is developing breakthrough biosensing technology that continuously monitors insulin in real time, enabling earlier detection of metabolic disease and providing insights beyond what current glucose monitoring alone can offer. He says the company’s goal is to complement existing continuous glucose monitoring with a second, earlier biomarker which will alert healthcare providers and patients allowing for early intervention and treatment.
“The part of the technology I am most proud of is that we’re approaching insulin monitoring from a fundamentally different direction than current biosensors,” said Fowler. “Glucose monitoring benefits from enzymatic and electrochemical sensing technologies, but those approaches do not translate directly to insulin. Our platform uses engineered synthetic receptors to recognize insulin, creating the possibility of continuous insulin measurement without relying on antibodies or enzymes. We believe this could open an entirely new layer of metabolic monitoring and, ultimately, allow clinicians to see insulin resistance developing years before a conventional diabetes diagnosis.”
Fowler says he applied to the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program because it offered funding and an opportunity to strengthen his company’s commercialization strategy, including developing relationships and partnerships with established continuous glucose monitoring platforms.
The Vogt Awards funding will allow ImprintBio to create more opportunities to generate and retain intellectual property as the technology matures and strengthen the company’s National Science Foundation’s Small Business Technology Transfer (NSF STTR) Phase I application and supporting data, which if won will give the company access to additional non-dilutive grant funding through the NSF’s America’s Seed Fund.
By the completion of Vogt Awards Demo Day, Fowler hopes ImprintBio will be in a stronger position for advancing its prototype, strengthening its intellectual property position, generating the validation data needed to demonstrate clinical utility, and establishing meaningful relationships with continuous glucose monitoring manufacturers.
“Personally, I hope to have grown from an engineer who developed a technology into a founder capable of successfully translating that technology into a company and, ultimately, into something that can improve how metabolic disease is detected,” he said.
Interested in learning more about ImprintBio? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day on Tuesday, November 17 at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
Bringing Harmony to Performing Arts School Operations: Meet Conductly
Pictured: Dustin Lyons and Amanda Lyons, Co-Founders of Conductly.
Co-founded by Amanda and Dustin Lyons, Conductly is an all-in-one platform for music and performing arts schools allowing them to manage everything from scheduling, enrollment, billing, student records and communication in one connected system. Conductly replaces the outdated patchwork of tools and systems many growing schools rely on today.
The duo says they started the company after seeing how much time music and performing arts schools spend managing the administrative work behind their programs.
“These schools play an important role in their communities, but many are still running on software that is fragmented, outdated, or simply not designed for the complexity of a growing school,” said Dustin. “We wanted to build something better. One system that connects the day-to-day operations of the school while also giving leaders the data and insights they need to understand their business, make better decisions, and grow with confidence.”
Dustin says they decided to apply for the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program because it provided an opportunity to build on the momentum Conductly is experiencing while gaining valuable mentorship, resources, and connections.
He said the Vogt Awards funding will help the team accelerate both product development and customer growth. They plan to invest in expanding Conductly’s AI capabilities, developing the mobile experience, and reaching more music and performing arts schools.
“The part we’re most excited about is where we’re taking the product next,” he said. “Because Conductly connects the operational data of a school, we can build AI that does more than answer questions. Our goal is for Conductly to become an active assistant that understands how a business operates, surfaces useful insights, and eventually helps carry out the administrative work itself.”
Dustin and Amanda hope to have built a stronger foundation for scaling Conductly by Vogt Awards Demo Day on November 17. They would like to have reached more music and performing arts schools and developed a more repeatable sales and onboarding process.
“We also hope to come out of the program as stronger founders, with a clearer understanding of how to turn the traction we’re seeing today into a much larger company,” said Dustin.
Interested in learning more about Conductly? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day Tuesday, November 17 at the Kentucky Derby Museum.
Make Healthcare Operations Easier with One Care Portal
Pictured: Ram Bastola, Founder of One Care Portal. Photography by Abdul Sharif Photography
Medical documentation and the associated paperwork for healthcare providers have increased exponentially, forcing providers to spend valuable time completing forms instead of providing the care their patients need. Ram Bastola, Founder and CEO of One Care Portal, developed a new healthcare software platform specifically for community-based care providers, including adult day care and case management organizations, to ease this burden.
“We bring day-to-day operations, documentation, compliance, and Medicaid billing into one simple, secure platform so providers can spend less time dealing with paperwork and disconnected systems and more time focused on the people they serve,” said Bastola.
The combination of funding, mentorship, and access to Louisville’s entrepreneurial community is what influenced Bastola to apply for the Vogt Invention and Innovation Awards program. He says he recognized it as an opportunity to learn from people who have already successfully built and scaled companies and use their experiences and expertise to help him take One Care Portal to the next stage.
According to Bastola, the company will focus the majority of the Vogt Awards funding on customer acquisition, attending industry conferences, improving sales and marketing, and continuing to strengthen the software platform and its security.
“What I’m especially proud of is that One Care Portal brings workflows that are normally spread across several systems into one platform designed specifically around how these providers actually operate,” he said. “From documenting care and staying audit-ready to submitting Medicaid claims and tracking payments, we’re making complicated healthcare operations much simpler. Because I’ve experienced these problems from the provider side as well as the technology side, we’re able to build around real operational problems rather than assumptions.”
By Vogt Awards Demo Day, on November 17, he wants One Care Portal to be a stronger and more scalable business, with a clearer sales process, more customers, and a stronger foundation for future growth.
“Personally,” says Bastola, “I want to come out of the program a better founder, especially when it comes to sales, communicating our vision, and building the relationships needed to grow the company.”
Interested in learning more about One Care Portal? Register to attend Vogt Awards Demo Day Tuesday, November 17 at the Kentucky Derby Museum.