“Since the start of the Nebraska EAS program, we’ve added three full-time jobs, two part-time jobs and expect to double our team size in the next 18 months,” said Ben Vu, founder and CEO of SkyVu Entertainment. SkyVu makes mobile social games for iPhone, iPad and Android. The company started in 2009 with four employees and expects to have 75 employees by 2013. SkyVu was one of 10 EAS program participants that shared their business growth stories at the Nebraska Department of Economic Development’s Reverse Trade Mission in September.

The Nebraska program is a joint effort of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, the Gallup Organization, the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and the University of Nebraska. Last spring, 27 small business and economic development leaders from across Nebraska were trained using Gallup’s system. For the past six months, each of those leaders has been mentoring five to 10 entrepreneurs.

“It’s been very exciting for me to get to work with businesses on their behind-the-scenes processes,” said Jason Ball, director of business development for the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development. Ball is mentoring eight companies including MileStone Local Surfaces. EAS has helped Milestone navigate the transition from a husband-and-wife artisan shop to a growing business with several employees.

“This came at a really good time for them and has really helped them formalize their process and their communication,” Ball said. ”They are really working hard with the program and they are seeing results. They are getting lots of positive feedback from their employees.”

MileStone founder Josh Shear said that employees now understand why they are asked to do something and that error rates have decreased 75 percent. Shear said Ball has pushed him to grow from the “guy who is doing all the work to the guy who is running the company.”

For 25 years, LiteForm Technologies has been manufacturing concrete forms in South Sioux City. This spring, just as EAS was getting started, the community called on the company to help hold back flood waters. Even as they helped engineer solutions for the flooding, LiteForm dove into the EAS program.

“The program really made us take a good look at ourselves and focused us on who we are as a company and who we want to be at this critical time in history,” LiteForm Sales Manager Casey Koch said. “Based on what we learned from EAS, we decided to increase our focus on engaging our customers, and, as a result, one customer made their biggest order ever totaling $220,000. We now expect to hire three more people in the next 18 months.”

The EAS system uses Gallup assessment tools that are backed by decades of business research. One conclusion of this research is that entrepreneurs are key to building strong economies.

“Entrepreneurship is a driving force behind sustainable economic development. Gallup has been researching this economic reality for decades,” Todd Johnson, team leader for global job initiatives at Gallup, told the Reverse Trade Mission. “In fact, in this country we realized through our research that about 1,000 entrepreneurs were responsible for the economic miracle that occurred between the 1970s and the 1990s.”

Nebraska is the first state to use the EAS program to provide business development assistance to early-stage entrepreneurs and to established firms with high-growth potential. The program focuses on building the individual strength of the entrepreneurs and helping them measure and grow in key areas of employee and customer engagement.

Megan Hunt, owner of Princess Lasertron, is taking her bridal designs to new markets.

For Megan Hunt, founder of Princess Lasertron bridal designs, EAS has empowered her to take a more proactive approach to growth. The company, started in Omaha in 2005, is now taking a bigger view of its potential market.

“I think the most valuable thing we gained from the program is the confidence that we are the experts at what we do,” Hunt said. “Moreover, with the increase of motivation and focus we received from EAS, we have also begun negotiating an international licensing deal that would place our product and brand on store shelves all over North America.”

EAS helped Intellicom, an IT services company based in Kearney, tweak its practices and accelerate its growth.

“We turned our five-year plan into a two-year plan,” said Dan Shundoff, Intellicom president and CEO. “Driven by the new focus on employee strengths, we are bringing incredible value to our client relationships – the ultimate competitive advantage. Key performance indicators show a 75 percent increase in profit and 24 percent increase in employee productivity during the fall of 2011.”

The mentoring program helps to instill best practices that will equip Nebraska businesses not only to grow, but to sustain and thrive through the growth process. Hudl, a Lincoln-based firm that creates software and video editing systems for sports coaches, acquired a competitor this year and more than doubled not only its customer base but also its workforce. With that growth came challenges, CEO David Graff said.

“The EAS gave us a better understanding of issues brewing at the lowest levels through the employee engagement assessment and a better view of the strengths of the leadership team,” Graff said. Graff added that EAS helped Hudl identify the need to add a management tier to what had been very flat organization.

For the Phoenix Web Group, EAS has resulted in increased projects and profits. “As a direct result of employing some of the engagement techniques and concepts with our clients, we have booked nine new projects in just the last month,” company president Neil Johnson said. The custom software developer from Waverly reported that new projects combined with increased productivity lead to a seven-fold increase in profits compared to 2010.

“The future looks very bright at Phoenix Web group,” Johnson said. “As far as the EAS system goes, am I a believer? Yes, I am.”

Ball said that the EAS program is intensive and takes a significant amount of time from entrepreneurs, not just to meet with mentors and attend meetings, but to implement the changes and processes.

“It comes down to time allocation, which is the big question that faces small business owners every day,” Ball said.

Nebraska Entrepreneur will continue to follow the businesses that are part of EAS and publish periodic reports throughout the two-year program.

Wirtz was our interviewer for the night and brought questions for one of Lincoln’s most successful software developers, Steve Kiene. Kiene started his first software company at age 17 and now is part of a new venture, Nebraska Global.

For a writeup about the Young Professionals Group event and more on Wirtz and Kiene, check out the article on Silicon Prairie News labeled Nebraska Global, Hudl leaders talk business-building at YPG event.

Callahan presented the challenge in 2006 to David Graff, a student at the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at UNL working in the Husker’s media relations and sports information department.

When Graff and two other Raikes School students, John Wirtz and Brian Kaiser, showed Callahan a web-based prototype a month before spring football practice started, Callahan said he wanted it for that season.

“We couldn’t deliver on that, but that’s kind of when we woke up to ‘There’s definitely something here that could be a legitimate business,’” Graff said.

Like the founders of Allied Strategy, also Raikes School graduates, Agile Sports founders say factors including the Raikes School’s Design Studio projects and the way the school enables relationship-building played into the success of their startup.

Wirtz said the Raikes School’s Design Studio, where students get real-life software development and management experience, built leadership and communication skills that help graduates in any business setting, including entrepreneurship.

“It was a pretty incredible experience to get at age 22 or age 23, when you are managing two teams of six people, working on projects for IBM and Microsoft,” Wirtz said.

In addition, Wirtz and Graff both said time living, working and studying together at the Raikes School made starting a company together easier.

“You build up such a familiarity working with your classmates that it made the transition to the three of us starting a company a lot easier for us,” Graff said. “I mean, we had been working together for five years. We understood how one another worked. We understood what each other’s strengths and weaknesses were,” he said.

And, Allied Strategy had set a path Agile Sports could follow and build on.

Allied Strategy’s investor contributed funds to the Design Studio project for Agile Sports’ Virtual Playbook because the investor wanted to encourage Raikes School students’ entrepreneurship, said Colby Thomson, Allied Strategy’s chief executive officer.

In addition, when Graff, Wirtz, and Kaiser pooled funds for an office and to hire an intern, Agile Sports moved into the same office building where Allied Strategy was housed.

That space resulted not only in the collaborative startup atmosphere that became Turbine Flats, but also the kind of stories you tell your grandkids. The building’s tenants were hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

“Really, the breaking point was when Brian was writing code in his gloves and complaining about how tough it was to type,” Wirtz said.

While the two companies no longer share a building, their executives still meet to talk about business.

In 2006 and 2007, Graff, Agile Sports’ chief executive officer, Wirtz, chief operating officer, and Kaiser, chief technology officer, worked with UNL football coaches and staff to build out the product.

Agile Sports followed Allied Strategy’s lead winning business plan competitions as a source for funds.  Agile Sports’ list of wins includes:

• - Semifinalist, 2007 Global Moot Corp Competition; $2,000
• - Winner, second annual Nebraska Business Plan Competition (predecessor to Invest Nebraska’s East 2 West Nebraska Venture Competition) winner; $25, 000
• - Grand prize, Venture Challenge 2007 in San Diego, California; $15,000 cash and $15,000 in consulting services
• - First place, graduate division, Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship-hosted New Ventures World Competition; $15,000
• - First runner-up, Big 12 New Venture Championship; $3,000
• - First place, graduate division, eighth annual UNL Venture Plan Championship; $1,000

“So in total we won more than $60,000 in cash that allowed us to continue to bootstrap and the three of us to eat ramen, to pay our interns, and to slowly increase that intern staff,” Wirtz said.

In early 2007, Agile Sports hired its first full-time employee, now their Hudl product manager. And, they began pursuing a first round of investment funding.

Wirtz said Agile Sports signed the UNL football program as its first paying client before the funding round closed.

“We were really proud of the fact that our first beta customer was also a paying customer,” Wirtz said.

The Raikes School’s namesake, Jeff Raikes, became one of the company’s investors along with an acquaintance of his and Nebraskan angel investors. Raikes is chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, formerly a division president for Microsoft, and a Nebraska native.

“(Jeff Raikes) is not only our lead investor but also just a huge mentor for us from the beginning,” Wirtz said.

The New York Jets were the first professional team to sign up for Agile Sports’ Hudl Pro product, which works with teams’ existing high-end video systems.

In the spring of 2008, Agile Sports began adapting the Hudl Pro system so high schools could use it with only a laptop and camera.

“Our engineering team did an amazing job, and by the end of July, we had an end-to-end video capture all the way through to online video analysis system rolled out to about 11 pilot partners,” Wirtz said.

Agile Sports designed Hudl for any sport and priced it so small programs can afford it. More than 1300 programs, mostly football and basketball teams, but also a bowling and an ultimate Frisbee team, use Hudl today.

The company recently completed a second round of funding. This year, Agile Sports achieved profitability and expects seven figures in revenue, Graff said.

And, as a Lincoln Journal Star article reported, recent deals mean that Hudl Pro clients now include seven of the Bowl Championship Series conference teams. A total of 13 programs, including three professional, now use Hudl Pro.

Agile Sports has 18 full-time employees and three interns. More than 60 percent of the full-time employees were Raikes School students.

The company has not only retained Nebraskans for employment but even brought one back from Austin, Texas. However, Wirtz and Graff both said young people leaving the state for a few years is okay, and more than okay if they bring back valuable experience.

“I think one of the key success factors we want to be looking at is how many are coming back within four to five years,” Wirtz said.

Thomson of Allied Strategy said he hopes other Raikes School students see entrepreneurship as feasible.

“I think it’s sort of inherent that kids in college have dreams and ambitions and ideas,” Thomson said. “I think the thing that it takes is making them feel it’s practical,” he said.

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