The Distill - The Gauntlet

Greeting Pioneers,

The idea behind Velocity is core to KYX: startups here don’t move fast enough. There are reasons, sure. But reasons turn into excuses, and excuses kill momentum. So we built a mechanism to erase them: a 12-week competition where selected startups aim to 3x revenue or customers.

How? Dedication. This is a sprint. The days will be long, the weeks will blur. But you won’t be grinding alone - you’ll be surrounded by 25 others doing the same. Hard work feels lighter when the room is heavy with it.

Experience. Between Dan, Rachel, Jack, Michael, Zeeshan - and every builder at Cinderblock - there’s a shared brain trust. Growth accelerates when knowledge compounds. Blocks get unblocked faster.

Accountability. Everyone’s pulling, pushing, watching. You can’t hide in Velocity. You move, or you get moved past.

Density.
Experience.
Accountability.

The concept isn’t novel - it’s proven. What’s novel is finally bringing it to Louisville.

Its time to put it to the test. Escape velocity incoming.

📷 A Night to Remember

The long-awaited Velocity program officially launched last Friday.

The week before, Greg Langdon, Jack Manzella, Jack Crowdis, and Rachel Edenfield sat down to narrow 10 applicants into a five-founder cohort. After 2 hours of discourse, we bent our own rules, six builders earned their way in, and our inaugural velocity cohort was cemented.

Over the next week, we reviewed each founder’s 12-week roadmap. We pushed on metrics, suggested pivots, and sharpened strategies. The goal: give every founder a real shot at tripling customers and revenue by the end of the sprint.

Fast-forward to Friday. After final prep calls with the cohort, some pizza orders, and a little office staging, Cinderblock quickly filled with founder fervor. Cohort finalists linked up with their new running mates, soon-to-be Cinderblock comrades, and sandbox students. Even Bajornias showed up to cheer on Vogt contestants.

A giddy DRL kicked off the night with the run-of-show and our “Awesome Audience Competition,” where one lucky attendee who comes up with the best on-the-spot marketing idea for a Velocity company would walk away with an insane haul:

A free month of Cinderblock membership(non-transferable), a game-worn DRL headband, an infamous KYCombinator flat bill(literally designed for blockhead - IFYKYK), a now-contraband-HackKentucky shirt, a cinderblock, and a three-legged couch.

Rachel eloquently laid out the what and why behind Velocity, and the presentations began.

Each founder had one minute to introduce their startup and four minutes to walk through their roadmap - how they’ll get there and why they’ll win. Everyone delivered. No smoke: we were genuinely impressed.

The night wrapped with a the awesome audience competition. Shoutout to Rachel for taking home the prize - enjoy the couch, it’ll really tie the foyer together.

The night was pure KYX. Gritty. Raw. Full of air. Faces open and friendly. Builders feeding off each other.

The goal has always been: identify builders committed to growth and speed and give them the crew and the environment to make it happen.

Friday was the beginning of the next chapter for KYX: Velocity. Let’s get to work.

⚔️ The Cohort

Jokester - Platform for comedians to livestream their sets to fans who can't make it to shows.

Who: Dawson, a startup enthusiast, go-to-market vet & all around good guy.

Brandon Nguyen, a film & production vet, livestreaming expert, and loving father & husband.

Model: Comedians promote Jokester tickets to fans - fans purchase tickets - Jokester & the comedians make money together.

Velocity Goal: Validate the market, and de-risk the venue<>comedian<>purchaser model.

Starting Line: Pre-revenue, pre-customer. They have their first 5 comedians lined up and an MVP of their product ready to go.

Finish Line: $6500 in revenue & 600 customers (ticket purchasers).

Moneybot - Game helping teens learn financial literacy.

Who: Kahlil, the guy who’s actually working while everyone else is playing poker.

Model: Yearly subscription per seat paid by either schools or parents. Schools promote Moneybot to students. 

Velocity Goal: Get customers to pay! (Identify viable revenue model)

Starting Line: Pre-revenue. Beta in-market. 90 users in free pilots across 3 schools. 

Finish Line: $600 MRR. 300 new paid users.

Bottle Episodes - Customizable game engine for personalized social deception games you play with your friends.

Who: Maya, the one who taught herself to code to build an MVP in 1 week, then built it again, and again.

Model: Users pay to download the game, then pay more for special mods/skins (alternative game setups with new actions/story).

Velocity Goal: Prove that people will pay to play it!

Starting Line: Pre-revenue, pre-customer. Game is finished and ready for play testing.

Finish Line: $500 in revenue and 100 customers.

Proper Pilots - A booking & compliance tracking platform for flight schools.

Who: Timmy Tweet, the Cinderblock shelf builder himself. Military turned law enforcement, turned pilot, turned sales, turned founder - if a job needs done he’ll figure out how to do it.

Derrick Simpson, Derrick Simpson, the Architect of Code -the guy making sure Tim’s big promises actually work.

Model: Customers pay $1/month per user/seat, they’re also charged a $2 transaction fee for flights booked. 

Velocity Goal: Get Proper Pilots revenue generating.

Starting Line: Pre-revenue, over 100 users with beta access to a free version of the app. 

Finish Line: 500 monthly paid users plus $500 in MRR from subscriptions. 

LeapFrog - A job syndication engine that helps employers with hard to fill jobs connect with latam candidates.

Who: Felipe, developer turned founder who built a 14K mailing list practically overnight.

Model: employers pay $300/job posting with a money back guarantee that they’ll get candidates.

Velocity Goal: Rapidly test pivot to B2B Model.

Starting Line: $300 in MRR from candidates. Jobs newsletter with over 14K subscribers and a >40% open rate. 

Finish Line: $10K in new revenue. 20 new customers (employers).

Due Gooder - Syllabus-connected smart alert system helping college students never miss a deadline.

Who: Nate, the wunderkind himself. The future of KYX. The prototype we built velocity around. Who else has gone from nothing but an idea to 300 customers in 12 weeks. Time to do it again.

Ethan Havertape, the college junior and business ops wizard who masterminded a way to slide flyers under 10,000 dorm doors in a single weekend. Crazy ideas, clever execution, big results.

Model: Freemium. Students get calendar reminders for 1 class for free, then pay a low monthly or annual subscription fee for alerts across all of their courses.

Velocity Goal: Find a repeatable distribution model that can reliably 3X revenue during the “off season” (middle of semester).

Starting Line: ~$6.8K in MRR across 1.9K paying users. 249 signups last week. 

Finish Line: $18K in MRR. 18K new user signups. 

What It’s All For

We’ve said this a million times - but the Velocity Gauntlet isn't about who raises the most money or builds the prettiest product in 12 weeks. It's about proving you can execute consistently, week after week, when everyone's watching.

Every Monday, we publish the leaderboard with real vetted numbers. Real progress. Real accountability.

By December, we'll know which founders can ship under pressure and which ones were just good at talking about shipping. (We’re placing our bets that all of them will hit their 3X goals and are doing everything we can to help them get there.)

The clock is ticking. Let's see who's run the farthest when it hits zero.

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.

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)

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

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