The Distill - Cinderblock: Opening Credits

Greeting Pioneers,

Summer’s ending. Cinderblock’s beginning.

We finally moved into the new space last Friday. Right now the place is a mess- boxes everywhere, wires dangling, desks half-built. But war rooms aren’t meant to be tidy. Startups aren’t tidy. They’re messy, raw, and loud. The only way to find what works is to make a mess and move fast enough that the scraps don’t slow you down.

We’ll clean it up eventually. For now, speed comes first. Q3 is closing, year-end is in sight, and the builders inside Cinderblock are heads-down chasing growth.

That’s the theme this week: velocity. From our 12-week sprint to get companies from idea to revenue, to Untitled helping cut through the mess of GTM and data - this is about moving faster, even if it isn’t clean.

Velocity - This Friday Sept 12th @ Cinderblock! 🚀

Last Friday, our selection committee locked in the finalists for Velocity - the 12-week startup competition built to turn early-stage ideas into revenue-generating businesses.

This Friday at our kickoff event, the finalists will be announced live at Cinderblock. Each team will present their 12-week roadmap - the exact plan they’ll execute to go from idea to paying customers.

📅 Friday @ Cinderblock

• 5:02 PM – Doors open + networking

• 5:45 PM – Velocity structure walkthrough & finalist intros

• Each team shares: startup name, team, current traction, roadmap, and why they’ll win

Register here for the kick-off event

We’ll see you there.

HacktheTrack Recap

The next generation is coming!

This weekend we had HacktheTrack, the first Kentucky high school hackathon at Story, organized by a fantastic team of high school students (Annika, Ajay, Maylin, Helen)!

9 teams made it to the finish and to say their presentations were amazing is an understatement. Each team had created a worked demo and presentation within 24 hours. One thing is for sure, the next generation of engineers, founders and entrepreneurs are ready for the future!

Thank you to our judges and mentors: Jeff Squyres, Zeeshan Bhatti, Anne Jewell, Kahlil Garmon, Maya Jamner, Kurt Thomas, Johnathan Vanderford, Zaid Bulbul, Grant Warfield, Kevin Gibson, Nate Royal!

Forecastr’s Startup Scramble (benefiting Amplify)

Dust off the sticks and come swing for a cause.

Bad at golf, and don't want to be stuck behind everyone else trying to get their ball out of the bunker? A scramble is for you! For those new to the concept: Everyone on your team tees off, then you play from the best ball each time. It’s gonna be fun. All the cool startups will be there. You should be there too.

• When: Oct 27 — check-in 11:00am, shotgun 1:00pm

• Where: Hunting Creek Country Club (Louisville)

• How much: Teams $600, Individuals $150

• Sponsorships: From $250 up to $5,000 (get your brand on the course)

Louisville Startup Spotlight: Untitled

Louisville’s Untitled is solving a simple but brutal problem: most companies don’t actually know who their customers are.

Think about it: someone browses your site, another person buys once and disappears, another signs up for emails but never clicks again. All those pieces of data are scattered. Untitled stitches them together into a clear picture of real people - who they are, what they care about, and how to reach them.

Once that picture is built, Untitled pushes it into the tools brands already use - email, ads, even streaming TV. The result is that instead of wasting money guessing who might buy, companies can talk directly to the people who actually will.

This matters because the big ad platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) now want you to hand them your budget and trust their AI to figure it out. The problem? Their algorithms get smarter while your money disappears.

Untitled flips it: you keep control of your audience, feed better information into those systems, and end up with customers instead of just clicks.

Try Untitled free for 14-days at getuntitled.ai

Note’s on The Distill’s EIC: Jack Crowdis

Jack runs the newsletter, helps run KYX. He’s a career startup kid, past founder, and current operator. Weekly contributor. Always editor.

Know someone who should read this? Forward it, or send them this link.

That’s a wrap 🎬
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Peace, Pioneers ✌️