Sarah Biller is a key player in FinTech in West Virginia and Executive Director of Vantage Ventures, an organization that’s committed to finding and cultivating the untapped tech talent in West Virginia to foster innovation and grow small businesses. Biller, an entrepreneur herself, co-founded the FinTech Sandbox, a Boston-based nonprofit providing entrepreneurs with access to high quality data sets. She also founded Capital Market Exchange, a venture capital-backed predictive analytics platform for institutional bond investors. “We’re unexpectedly cool in West Virginia. You don’t oftentimes think of coming to West Virginia to build a technology company and I will tell you the atmosphere, the energy, the outdoors, all the reasons that individuals are increasingly moving to West Virginia could be considered a competitive advantage. The non-obvious competitive advantage is something that we as West Virginians have known our whole lives, and that’s the sense of community that exists and rallies around these entrepreneurs. You never really build a company by yourself… The reality is a startup is a combination of a lot of contributions from a lot of people. West Virginia, in particular, has a very strong sense of community. The competitive advantage of West Virginia is that you can fit a lot of people around the table.” - Sarah Biller Innovators and Entrepreneurs is a bi-weekly segment of the daily304 that features discussions and wisdom from West Virginians who have built their companies and launched new ideas here in the Mountain State.

Phillip Merritt, Vice President and COO of Lakota Software Solutions, and co-founder Aaron Wilson left their jobs at NASA and took a chance on themselves to pursue careers in the growing field of biometric identification in their home state of West Virginia. They founded Lakota to create state-of-the-art technical solutions in the expanding biometrics industry right here in the Mountain State. Last year, Lakota partnered with TMC Technologies, another West Virginia-based company, to win a large contract to build a biometric system for the Somalia government. “My recommendation to people is that you have to enjoy learning and constantly seek out new opportunities to learn technology. Technology changes so fast — the stuff we’re doing today, they weren’t teaching in school ten years ago. Some of it they’re just now getting to so you have to stay up with it. ” Innovators and Entrepreneurs is a bi-weekly segment of the daily304 that features discussions and wisdom from West Virginians who have built their companies and launched new ideas here in the Mountain State.

Nearly a decade ago, Nancy Bruns, CEO and Co-Founder of J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works and J.Q. Dickinson Appalachian Mercantile tapped into a unique resource, a 400 million-year-old ocean, as she revived her family’s business producing salt in Malden, WV. With two decades of experience in the food industry, Bruns, a seventh-generation salt maker, added a booming event venue and subscription box business to J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works. “I think our innovation lies with community partnerships and what that can bring to a company, and that’s why we started the Appalachian Mercantile. This is a shop and subscription box business where we partnered with other Appalachian makers. We want to share those items with the world because there’s so much quality craftsmanship here in Appalachia, which is really something no one else is doing. We want to take advantage of what we have here in the state and the region and share it with the world.” Innovators and Entrepreneurs is a bi-weekly segment of the daily304 that features discussions and wisdom from West Virginians who have built their companies and launched new ideas here in the Mountain State.

Todd Cope, CEO of CentralAPP, is a West Virginian on the go. Last year, he and his Tesla made a cross-country trek from West Virginia to Silicon Valley to highlight tech jobs in places you might not expect them. He also took the opportunity to connect with industry leaders to learn more about strengthening the tech economy in Appalachia. This year, he’s joining the West Virginia Department of Economic Development and other West Virginia tech-centered companies at South By Southwest 2022. Cope, a native West Virginian and former Silicon Valley exec, is deeply committed to promoting equal economic opportunity by expanding tech jobs in rural areas. “I was born here, and I love West Virginia, but besides that, the access to a talented domestic resource of human capital that we can use is just amazing. The amount of people here that are capable and willing to do dedicated work and learn something new in the tech economy — that’s the reason we’re here.” — Todd Cope Innovators and Entrepreneurs is a bi-weekly segment of the daily304 that features discussions and wisdom from West Virginians who have built their companies and launched new ideas here in the Mountain State.