Business planners from UA take first

Jared Greer, 37, has more experience than most participants in the annual Governor’s Cup business-plan competition.

And Greer, founder and chief executive officer of Lapovations LLC, a medical-device startup from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has taken advantage of that experience.

On Wednesday, Lapovations won the graduate division competition, and $25,000, in the 18th Governor’s Cup held at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

Lapovations now has won five business plan competitions and finished second in two others. In all, the company has won $300,000 in similar competitions, Greer said.

Greer has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering, a master’s in business administration and will graduate in May with a master’s in biomedical engineering. All three degrees are from the University of Arkansas.

Lapovations is developing a noninvasive alterna-

tive for lifting the abdominal wall in laparoscopic surgeries, Greer said.

Greer has been in medical sales for 15 years. His company’s co-founder is a surgeon in Northwest Arkansas who has completed more than 4,000 laparoscopic surgeries, Greer said. He declined to identify the surgeon.

“He had been bothered by the current techniques and he brought me an idea for this device that would be less invasive,” Greer said. “He got the idea from personal experience.”

Greer and the surgeon have been friends for years. They are co-inventors on the patent. The product was the

focus of Greer’s thesis work.

Greer and his co-founder have personally invested $150,000 in the startup.

Lapovations, based in Northwest Arkansas, will focus this summer on finding investors to help finance the company and get the product to market, Greer said.

“We’ve already found a contract manufacturer [to make the product],” Greer said. “We’re going through the final design and verification before we can move to mass production late this year.”

Lapovations still needs Class 1 device approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Greer said.

At that point, Greer will put his sales skills to work talking to doctors and hospitals he has worked with in

the past.

Other students with Lapovations are executives Michael Dunavant and Flavia Araujo. The company’s faculty advisers were Carol Reeves and Sarah Goforth.

Uchooze Lunchbox LLC from UA was second in the graduate division and won $15,000. Ozark Microheater Systems of UA finished third and won $10,000.

Spiritum Solutions from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, won the undergraduate division and $25,000.

Spiritum Solutions is a startup that has developed an innovative way to secure tracheal tubes, said Nicholas Lester, the company’s chief executive officer.

“We have an attachment that is fully integrated with

the endotracheal tube that [prevents it] from being pulled out,” Lester said.

Securing tracheal tubes can significantly reduce a patient’s hospital stay, Lester said.

Spiritum Solutions began with technology from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said Noah Asher, Spiritum’s chief financial officer.

The company surveyed about 130 patients, Asher said.

“We took all the feedback and the data we recovered from interviews,” Asher said. “We went back to the drawing board and designed our own solutions.”

Another executive with Spiritum Solutions is Ingrid Helgestad. The firm’s faculty adviser was Stuart McLendon.

WinterTerm.com from Ouachita Baptist University finished second in the undergraduate division and won $15,000.

Monity from Harding University finished third in the undergraduate division and won $10,000.

In other categories, Spiritum Solutions won the undergraduate 90-second elevator pitch award and $2,000. Lapovations won the graduate level elevator pitch award and $2,000.

On the undergraduate level, the $5,000 innovation award winner was TiFix from Harding University. The graduate winner of the $5,000 innovation award was Ozark Microheater Systems from UA.

Connor Innovation of

Roveround of UA won the agriculture award and $5,000. Scan Ag of UA was second and won $3,000.

A total of $152,000 was awarded to the top teams Wednesday. Delta Plastics was lead sponsor for the competition.