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Startland Information’ Startup Street Journey collection explores revolutionary and unusual concepts discovering success in rural America and Midwestern startup hubs outdoors the Kansas Metropolis metro. This collection is feasible due to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Basis, which leads a collaborative, nationwide effort to determine and take away massive and small obstacles to new enterprise creation.
MOBERLY, Missouri — Anna Haney desires to know what individuals hate most about work. No, actually.
“The extra that I meet with producers and the extra that I speak to individuals, my favourite query to ask is, ‘What sucks about your job?’” Haney mentioned. “After which I simply pay attention, as a result of they’re going to inform me every part that sucks about their job.”
As soon as she is aware of the ache factors for each division all through a company, Haney and her two co-founders at Noviqu get to work; constructing personalized security, coaching, and compliance software program options that assist producers digitize their paper-based processes.
In actual fact, Haney mentioned, the inspiration for Noviqu — a member of the NMotion Growth Accelerator inaugural cohort — was born from listening to managers out-complain each other.
“The thought for Noviqu got here out of a dialog of nothing however straight up bitching about work,” she mentioned. “Actually 5 completely different managers having a bitch fest collectively in entrance of two completely random software program developer strangers to allow them to understand how crappy their lives have been.”
Haney’s energized by the prospect of fixing these issues and bettering employees’ day-to-day experiences on the job, she mentioned.
“You go on this journey with them,” Haney mentioned. “What you discover in widespread with all these conversations — and it’s throughout all industries, not simply manufacturing — is, ‘I spend a lot of my time and my mind energy doing work that doesn’t matter.’”
“I might hate that, too,” she continued. “As a human, your mind is used to fixing issues. That’s not fixing issues, and that’s not exercising your mind. There’s a lot extra that an individual can do to offer worth to that firm than sit in entrance of an Excel spreadsheet.”
Austin Gardner, Anna Haney, and Chad Haney, Noviqu
Founding household
Noviqu was formally based in 2017, though the idea dates again to 2014, when Haney and her co-founder (and now-husband) Chad launched Tin Can Applied sciences in Columbia.
It was there they discovered the third co-founder of Noviqu, Austin Gardner, who additionally serves as the corporate’s CTO. Gardner joined Tin Can Applied sciences in 2015 as an intern with, in his phrases, “no real-life expertise with programming.”
On the time, Gardner was learning laptop science at Columbia School, and his most up-to-date job had been at Bass Professional Outlets. He utilized after seeing the intern place in his college’s jobs e-newsletter.
Regardless of his lack of expertise, Haney mentioned, it was instantly evident that Gardner could be a useful asset.
“Austin has labored with us on each single mission that I’ve ever professionally constructed at this level, and he is an outstanding human,” Haney mentioned. “He got here out of school straight into working with us after which continued with us ceaselessly, as a result of actually I might by no means let him go. He’s manner too useful as a software program developer and as a co-founder.”
Gardner mentioned the three Noviqu co-founders operate as a household, which grew to become very true as soon as Chad and Anna tied the knot.
“They joke that they’d like to undertake me if they may,” Gardner mentioned.
Founders within the 2022 NMotion Development Accelerator cohort mingle at a current announcement occasion; photograph courtesy of Scott Henderson, NMotion
Moberly to NMotion
Though the corporate’s roots are in Columbia, that emphasis on household led Noviqu to function out of close by Moberly, a city of about 15,000 individuals positioned 35 miles north of the mid-Missouri faculty city.
The Haneys moved to Moberly to be nearer to Chad’s two teenage daughters, at the very least till they graduate highschool. After that, Anna mentioned, the couple plans to purchase an RV and journey for a pair years with their youngest daughter, who’s now 7.
“We wished to verify we have been there for them as they grew,” Haney mentioned. “Getting the older children for 20 to 30 % of their total adolescence isn’t sufficient, so we moved to Moberly so we might get the youngsters 50/50. I might say that it was completely price it.”
Even so, Haney is aware of that Moberly isn’t precisely the everyday setting for a startup, which is one cause she utilized for Noviqu to take part within the Omaha-based, 12-week NMotion accelerator.
“A part of the concept and a part of the profit to going via a program like NMotion is to get myself and our firm again into an ecosystem the place we now have good individuals round us who perceive what we’re going via,” Haney mentioned.
“As a result of whereas we all know a pair small enterprise house owners in our city, there’s nothing fairly just like the startup grind and the startup course of that you just don’t get in a standard small enterprise,” she added.
Haney mentioned that the Noviqu staff had different particular causes for becoming a member of the accelerator program. First, they wished to solidify and develop the gross sales course of, and secondly, it gives an awesome alternative to be paired with mentors who can present ongoing steerage.
Anna Haney, Noviqu, on the 2018 Techstars Kansas Metropolis Demo Day
‘We have to do one thing higher’
Throughout the three-month accelerator, Gardner mentioned, he’s largely “held down the fort” on the know-how aspect in Moberly as Anna travels to Omaha. Chad Haney is now not concerned in day-to-day operations.
The trio participated within the Techstars Kansas City accelerator in 2018, however Anna mentioned they weren’t fairly able to scale at the moment.
After what Haney described as a pair years of “letting it trip” following the pandemic, Noviqu has refocused its mission and now works with 10 shoppers on a recurring foundation, with plans to scale up.
Within the interim, the Haneys discovered a gymnasium in Moberly the place they now coach. Bodily health offered a spark to get them — and Noviqu — again on monitor, Anna Haney mentioned, noting that in work, health, and life “the ache is the place your development is.”
In the end, she mentioned, Noviqu’s purpose is to assist different like-minded companies develop, partially by permitting managers to be much less overwhelmed by menial duties.
“It simply takes the best individual in the best mentality to say, ‘OK, we’re not going to do that established order of BS anymore. We have to do one thing higher,’” she mentioned. “These are the businesses I attempt to discover, as a result of these are the best prospects for Noviqu, and that’s the place the worth to any enterprise goes to be added.”
“If you’ll find any person that cares sufficient to make your life higher or to make it simpler,” Haney continued, “then that you just’re constructing one thing that works and that you just’re rising.”
This story is feasible due to assist from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Basis, a personal, nonpartisan basis that works along with communities in training and entrepreneurship to create unusual options and empower individuals to form their futures and achieve success.
For extra data, go to www.kauffman.org and join at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn
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