October 2021, Elevate Rapid City opened the doors for the David Lust Accelerator Building. After months of anticipation and construction delays, at last they were able to welcome the first startup companies. Over the next few years these tech-based startups will receive management assistance and a nurturing, professional environment to develop their business in Rapid City. Elevate firmly believes believes innovation and entrepreneurship coalesce in the DLAB around people, companies, and the area’s start-up culture.
Darren Harr, board chair of Elevate, opened the ceremony reflecting on the time it took to get here. "We've held a groundbreaking and ribbon cutting, but this is the most exciting event we could host in this building. You [the companies], are what this work is all about."
Mitch Nachtigall, innovation & entrepreneurship director, served as emcee for the evening and introduced the seven companies, presenting their first "keys" to the building. The seven tech-based startup companies currently in the Rapid City business accelerator are:
CounSil, LLC
CounSil LLC seeks to provide a solution to greatly improve the efficiency of Ellsworth Air Force Base's acquisition of items needed for base operations. CounSil sees opportunity and necessity to provide this solution to Air Force bases across the US and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the US military.
Integral Health
Integral Health, Ltd. has, to date, focused primarily on the federal government space and has been used to help launch federal initiatives, as partnering on the most successful open enrollment date for the Department of Health and Human Services via a collaboration with Integrated Management Solutions. They achieved over 10% increase in benefit enrollees during the 9th OE period for CMS and served as the Regional Health Coordinator for Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
Hydrolyst
Hydrolyst LLC provides an innovative solution to address these challenges through a novel and proprietary coating technique to produce a far superior electrocatalyst compared to those commercially available today. Hydrolyst estimates using their novel approach they can reduce the cost to produce electrocatalysts by approximately two-thirds of today’s cost. In addition, Hydrolyst products will have a significantly longer life span, faster reaction time, and can be easily customized in various sizes to meet customer needs.
DH Geothermal
Dr. Dan Hoyer is a senior geothermal executive with 44 years of experience in drilling and geothermal projects. He has experience exploring, designing, constructing, starting up, and operating production and injection wells, power generation and resource gathering systems, and direct-use projects around the world.
DH Geothermal LLC (DHG) is a privately held firm formed in 2021 focused solely on geothermal energy development. Dr. Dan Hoyer, President is the sole employee and echoed the value of the DLAB. "This is about more than space for our companies. We have lunch and learns. We are able to talk with one another. This, to me, is the true spirit of innovation and it is being built in Rapid City."
Smart Technologies
Smart Technologies is developing a breakthrough continuous screen-sharing technology to serve the booming work-from-home software market. They help contact centers create a virtual campus that solves the communication and training challenges surrounding remote work. Their unique patent pending streaming technology supports asynchronous collaboration between remote staff and their managers. Founder Ryan shared the benefits he has already seen. "The staff at Elevate is a remarkable support system. They were able to make an introduction to another local company. They also helped connect me with South Dakota Mines and that resulted in our first full-time employee."
Zinvent Industries
Zinvent manufactures fish-friendly water pump filters so baby salmon, for example, don't get harmed when firefighters pull water out of lakes and streams. Right now, these are mainly used by Federal wildland firefighters battling fires in remote areas of the West Coast in salmon habitat.
FullSend Ski Company
FullSend Ski Company was founded in 2016 by Doug with this hair brained scheme that he could produce better skis for himself than the ones he could buy. Turns out ski building is quite a bit more complicated than simply following along with a few YouTube videos, reading skibuilders.com and buying a ski press. The first few years there were many failed prototypes, but now production is in full swing and Doug is making the greatest skis yet!
Click here for more information about Elevate Rapid City's entrepreneurial support network, or the David Lust Accelerator Building.