YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – It was a matchmaking event for entrepreneurs, software developers and technology professionals.

And more than 60 attended the event Tuesday looking for “the one.” The Youngstown Business Incubator hosted the event in partnership with Code Youngstown. 

The EvolveConnect: Founder Matchmaking event was designed to connect founders and technical talent and provide a platform for participants to pitch their ideas, network with industry experts and explore potential co-founder partnerships. 

Chandler Fiffick, senior director of YBI’s Evolve Entrepreneurship program, said the program includes a number of entrepreneurs who are the business leads or co-founders.

“So they have business expertise or industry expertise as it relates to their particular company, but none of them know how to build the application,” she said. “None of them know how to actually code or develop the software. So the purpose of the event was to get them pitching in front of these software engineers that are local and also members of Code Youngstown and hopefully find co-founders or technical leads for those companies that pitched.”

Connections were made and conversations were started, which was the intent of the event, Fiffick said.

Joe Duncko of Code Youngstown, a social group of software developers, said the event was exciting.

“And I think I speak for most people who went – it was exciting to learn more about tech in Youngstown,” he said. 

A lot of people who work in tech in Youngstown work either remotely or for a manufacturing company rather than a tech startup or a tech-focused organization that’s selling software, Duncko said.

“So it was pretty exciting to learn more about the different efforts in Youngstown on that front,” he said.

Jeff Hedrich was among those who attended the event.

“So it’s kind of a matchmaking – a professional matchmaking – between founders of startup ventures that YBI is involved with, and people in the local area who are either owners and developers or potentially even chief technology officers, if they are interested,” he said.

Hedrich, owner of Prodigal Co. for about 30 years, attended looking for a match for BrandWorth, a new software venture of which he is a co-founder.

“We’re going to bring brand valuation to place financial valuation on private company brands through a software as a service platform,” he explained. “So right now, if you go to buy or sell a private company, there’s no value put on the brand. Even though with publicly traded companies, in the stock price, the value of the brand is worked into that …”

And he found a potential match at Tuesday’s event.

Reid Polis, founder of Truk-Em, a YBI portfolio company, was another event attendee. Truk-Em is a software as a service platform for local businesses.

“And essentially what we do is we give them the ability to have local delivery options that they might not have otherwise been able to afford,” Polis explained.

EvolveConnect enabled him to make connections and meet people he otherwise might not have. He also appreciated learning about what other people are working on.

Polis lives in Poland, and Truk-Em serves customers in the midwest. The company started in March 2024 and has pivoted a couple of times since. He got the idea while visiting an electronics store with his father on Black Friday.

“These guys ordered a TV and they had no way to get home,” he said. They asked the store to hold onto it, but the store declined. The men had to return the television.

“So I told my dad, ‘There should be an app for that,’” Polis said. “He was like, ‘Hang on to that. That’s not a bad idea.’”

Truk-Em sets up businesses that need delivery services with its software and an account.

“And that account gets them access to a delivery form that they give their customers,” Polis said. 

After accepting the quote, the customer pays for the order. The information goes to Truk-Em’s database and to its pool of drivers.

“One of them picks it up, facilitates the order, then moves on. They try and deliver it within a couple days,” Truk-Em’s founder explained.

Fiffick called the turnout phenomenal and said future EvolveConnect events are planned.

“We’ll definitely do it once a year, at least for the business leads pitching to the technical experts,” she said. “But we also may do another one, where it is the technical founders pitching to the business experts so that you’re kind of hitting it from both sides.” 

In-person events haven’t returned to normal since the pandemic, but Fiffick said the EvolveConnect event felt closer to prepandemic.

“All around was just kind of a pleasure to throw and to see people enjoy it,” she said.

Pictured at top: Participants in Tuesday’s EVOLVEConnect: Founder Matchmaking event.