Evidence

This did not start with a hypothesis

The problem was experienced firsthand, working between a university, a workforce organization, employers, and learners. Pieces of the solution have been tested in the real world with real placements. What is not yet proven is stated as such.

What 177 students said stops them

A survey of 177 students, asking what actually prevents them from taking a career-connected opportunity. The answers were not what a job board would fix.

The cost of internship credit

A learner is asked to pay tuition in order to receive credit for work they are doing — sometimes work that is already being subsidised from another direction. It is the barrier we can most directly remove, and the one nothing in the sector currently addresses.

Not knowing what exists

Opportunities that were open, local, and a good fit went unfilled because the people they were written for never saw them.

Scheduling

Class schedules, existing jobs, and family obligations that a full-semester commitment cannot bend around.

Too few local options

A short list of opportunities close to home, in a place where relocating for an internship is not realistic.

What has already been tested

Not a pilot we are proposing. Work that was done, inside existing organizations, before this became a venture.

Two systems, connected deliberately

Working across a regional university and a Kansas workforce organization at the same time made it possible to see the same talent problem from both sides — and to test what happens when education, employers, workforce funding, and learners are intentionally connected rather than left to find each other. That included placing learners with rural employers and coordinating workforce funding against career-connected experiences.

Short-format experiences, statewide

Involvement in a statewide micro-internship program extended that discovery beyond one region and tested a second model: shorter, project-based ways for employers and learners to connect when a full semester is not realistic for either.

Direct work with small employers

Ongoing conversations with employers about what makes participation realistic for an organization with no HR department, limited time, and no experience hosting a learner. This is what shaped the service around them rather than around the program.

The consistent finding across all of it: rural communities usually already have the programs, the funding, the employers, and the talented people. What is missing is the connective infrastructure between them.

What is already committed

Technology funding secured before launch, earmarked specifically for the partner dashboard.

$15,000
development funding won in a pitch competition: $5,000
from a private investor, earmarked for the same build: $20,000
committed to technology development in total

That funds the dashboard partners use to see and manage their own ecosystem — employers, opportunities, pathways, funding, and outcomes in one place. A working prototype of the surrounding workflow already exists and can be clicked through today.

Open the prototype

What is not proven yet

Stated here rather than left for someone to discover. A venture that publishes its own open questions is easier to trust on the answered ones.

Who pays, and what for

The service need has been validated through direct implementation. The institutional revenue model has not. Moving from people saying they need this to organizations allocating budget for it is the next real test, and it is the one the proving ground exists to run.

Whether it travels

A model that works because one person knows every partner in one community is not yet a business. Four communities — three university towns and one much smaller — are how we find out which parts are repeatable and which were local luck.

Where participants end up

The outcome that matters is employment close to home, and it takes a year of data to produce. We are building the measurement before there is anything to measure, so year one is not retrospectively unmeasurable.

Where the venture stands

Pre-revenue and in validation. The work that produced these findings was carried out through existing organizations and programs; nothing has yet been earned as a standalone venture. The first phase opens in 2027 with the first paying partners.