This year’s Pitch Night was another huge success, as local entrepreneurs competed in two categories that highlight local talent. More than 100 people attended the event, which was hosted and catered by the Wind River Hotel and Casino.
“Homegrown” was a competition category sponsored by Wyoming Community Bank that asked traditional small businesses and startups to pitch their ideas for growth. This year’s winner was Sheridan Davis with Sunnyside Daycare.
Sunnyside Daycare opened in May of 2025 to serve parents of all demographics and schedules. They offer full-time, part-time and drop-in care as a well as Saturday care. Their next goal was to expand, and the Start-Up Challenge is helping them achieve that goal.
The “Fremont Futures” category was sponsored by County 10, because it involved leveraging current technologies to create high growth businesses. The winner in this category is RJ Jubber with Q Score.
In 2024, RJ founded Q-Score, a real-time risk assessment SaaS platform that serves as the last line of defense for high-hazard industries. Drawing on his frontline leadership experience, Q-Score quantifies consequence severity at the point of work using HOP principles. Following successful beta testing that showed a 30% increase in hazard identification, Q-Score officially entered the market in early 2026 and is now scaling across Wyoming’s heavy industrial sectors.
You can read every finalist’s biography at Bootstrap Collaborative online.
Thank you to the judges this year: Christine Langley, Director of Founder Success at Startup Wyoming; Ryan Hedges, Branch Manager and VP of Commercial Loans at Wyoming Community Bank in Lander; Rylan O’Bryan, Venture Development Manager at the Wyoming Business Council; and Cindy Olson, Executive Director of the Riverton Chamber of Commerce.
Thank you to Start-Up Challenge sponsors Central Wyoming College, Wind River Hotel and Casino, Wyoming Community Bank, County10; Riverton Chamber of Commerce, The LOR Foundation, Brunton, Lander Community Foundation, Startup Wyoming, and the Wyoming Business Council.
The Bootstrap Collaborative is a joint effort between Central Wyoming College, County 10, Makerspace 307 and the Wind River Development Fund. Its intention is to help new and existing businesses and entrepreneurs succeed and prosper while providing events and networking.