Greeting Pioneers,

Week one of the Velocity Gauntlet is in the books, and the grit of this crew is already showing up in spades. Felipe (Leapfrog) bought a second car just to commute from Frankfort three days a week. The gentlemen of Jokester are asyncing their way to carrots and onions—first in, last out. Maya built and demoed a playable prototype in just days.

Effort is a foundational element of KYX and the backbone of Velocity. You have to show up first. Put in the reps and success will follow.

To fuel that, we’re adding more live sessions. Slack is buzzing with questions, feedback, and support, but now we’ll bring that energy into the room with Friday recaps and next-week roadmaps presented in front of the cohort. Adding a layer of accountability and structure to sharpen execution.

The brightest, unguided signal so far? Community. This is a competition, but everyone’s committed to each other’s success. The goal is to get every startup past their finish line with 3X growth. Watching founders back each other from day one has been cool to see.

The cohort will grow, and so will the vehicle designed to deliver velocity. One week down. Eleven to go. Onward and upward.

🔦 Velocity Spotlight: Maya • Bottle Episodes

Ten weeks ago, without any programming experience to draw on, Maya hacked together a working prototype in Glide (a low-code webapp building tool). After seeing her prototype in-action, she went all-in, teaching herself prompt-engineering and enough C# and javascript to rebuild the whole thing in a modular system so that she could build new games quicker. First up: an among us-style zombie survival game you can play with your friends. Comes packed with infection-mechanics, room-specific rules, alliances, and inside jokes.

What makes Bottle Episodes unique is the ability to customize each game to your friends. Last week, Maya created a Cinderblock mod for her first play test – our game mechanics were specific to us and all of our inside jokes. IE, there were sleeping pledges in the Duegooder office that could be deployed by Nate’s character, while Dan’s character started the game with a purple headband that let his persona gain sanity when worn.

Each week, Velocity teams commit to motions that move the needle to customers and revenue forward. At the Friday kickoff, the game wasn’t quite playable yet. Maya still needed to figure out hosting and hadn’t decided on the first custom mod.

By Saturday, she thought it would be funny to make one Cinderblock specific and started building the modular system that would allow for customization.

Her first week goal was to run 1 playtest with real users, collect customer feedback after + reach out to local game stores to secure a demo night in 3 weeks.

Check, check, and check.

The play tests at Cinderblock weren’t pretty on the surface (backend actions weren’t always visible in the UI), but it worked: players joined, chose characters, infection progressed on timers, multiple games ran at once, and a >3-player bug surfaced and got fixed—exactly the kind of fast feedback loop we want for this cohort.

Maya also talked to local gamers and secured a spot for a public demo/playtest in a couple weeks.

What’s next: this week Maya’s documenting daily progress of Bottle Episodes here: Twitter | Instagram #buildinpublic. You can find updates on our Linkedin as well. By the end of this week, the first mod will be completely finished - playable end-to-end with all mechanics viewable to the user and no bugs in the golden path. Next week, Maya builds the UI layer that allows you to create your own zombie mod.

The future of Bottle Episodes is a no-code platform for multiplayer story games–a series of custom stories you can kick-off with a short intake–so creators can ship worlds without touching code. If you want in, Maya’s looking for beta testers, local gaming venues, and artists/graphic designers. Reply to this email or DM in Slack and we’ll connect you.

🎟️ 45 Fest

45Fest debuted Wednesday. From Maggie Harlow’s keynote on celebrating weirdness, to the sessions that followed and the vibe of the venue—every piece of 45Fest felt like a reflection of Kevin and his vision for the city and the weirdos who choose Louisville.

It’s a case study in community, endurance, and execution. Kevin took 45Fest from 0 to 1 and delivered something fresh for Louisville. We can’t wait to see what’s next.

📅 KYX Schedule

🟪 BlockHard Wednesday
No BlockHard this week (Sept 24) — we’ll all be at Rally Innovation Conference.
📍Next BlockHard: October 1.

🚀 Rally Innovation Conference
📍 Sept 24–25
👥 40+ KYX registered — Velocity companies, NKU + UofL students, Cinderblock companies, Louisville Collegiate.
We’re showing up in force.
Currently waitlist only — register here → luma.com/g4xibuym.
Spots may open if people cancel.

🎉 Block Party
Cinderblock Grand Opening — details dropping soon. Stay tuned.

🏆 Velocity Finale / The LOUIES
📍 Thursday, Dec 4 @ 5:02 PM
Celebrate the end of the year with us, crown the Velocity cohort, and yes… there will be Chili’s. 🌶️

Bonus Tracks: DRL Cinderblock Updates

Editors Note* Fascinating peak into the brain of DRL with some groundbreaking updates shared in words and pictures below.

Cinderblock is rapidly expanding and improving. Thank you Felice for bringing your truck and helping us haul some drywall to Cinderblock. Here’s some other updates from Cinderblock:

We added 3 desks and built a phone booth. The phone booth blocks our live stream camera stand (whops!). Phone booth door coming sometime this week.

Note’s on The Distill’s Co-EICs: Jack Crowdis & Rachel Edenfield

Jack runs the newsletter, helps run KYX. He’s a career startup kid, past founder, and current operator. Weekly contributor. Always editor. If you think he’s missing something, say so—he’s already rewriting next week’s issue.

Rachel adds flavor and consistency to The Distill. She a driver behind KYX, a force in the Louisville startup scene, and Founder/CEO of venture-backed Swell. Routinely delivers the city’s sharpest longform startup advice. Always re-edits Jack’s edits(including this bio)

Editors Note** After a string of “editorial decrees” in situations completely unrelated to the newsletter, we've had no choice but to revoke Edenfield's freshly appointed promotion to Co-EIC. Following a one-week suspension, she’ll return rested, reformed, and ready to edit in a role we hope will warrant less decrees - Managing editor.

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

That’s a wrap 🎬
Keep showing up 👊 
Keep shipping 🚢 
Peace, Pioneers ✌️