Day 1 – Breakout Session 3 – 3:30-4:00 PM
Room: Affectiv
Idaho Isn’t a Limitation. It’s the Advantage You Haven’t Fully Used.
Stu Draper · Stukent · RizeCon 2026 · Pocatello
Stu Draper sat next to a banker at RizeCon 2019 and was disappointed about it. He builds companies from scratch, companies with a solid shot of not working, and bankers want proven bets. But they got talking, and it turned out the banker knew Stu’s family from Blackfoot. Three months later, Stu’s education technology company acquired a financial literacy simulation, and he needed someone from the banking industry to help them understand what it should look like. He called that banker — Kent Orum, CEO of Idaho Central Credit Union. Kent came to Idaho Falls, saw the simulation, and committed millions of dollars to put Stukent’s financial literacy simulation in the hands of every student in the state of Idaho.
That’s why he told the room to turn to the person on their right and whisper, “You might make me millions.” Not because every person in the room would. Because you don’t know which ones will.
What he covered
You can build a high-growth business in Idaho. You have to decide to. Stukent made the Inc. 5000 list ten times. It was built in Idaho Falls. When Stu and his team went to professor conferences selling ed-tech, people would ask where they were based and look surprised when the answer was Idaho. His response: “Yeah, we have the internet too, it turns out.” He stayed deliberately. When investors asked if he needed to move to Silicon Slopes or raise VC money from the Bay Area, he said no. The choice to stay wasn’t default — it was a decision, and it required believing it was possible before it was proven.
Idaho culture is a product advantage. Every time Stu sat down with a professor considering becoming a Stukent author, and before he could get very far into lunch, they would say: “How did you build such an incredible team? Everyone is so nice.” He would give them the honest answer. Number one was Idaho. People in Idaho are genuinely friendly and they work hard. He also interviewed every single person who joined his team up to 120 employees — not to evaluate their technical skills (that happened in earlier rounds) but to assess culture fit against seven core values. His question was simple: “Which core value is your favorite?” If someone had made it all the way to his office without learning the core values, that was a problem to solve — either the hiring manager needed retraining, or the candidate hadn’t done the work. He’d probe from there: “Tell me why you value winning.” And if the candidate said they weren’t competitive, he’d ask, “What does it look like when you’re killing it at life or at your job?” And then he’d know.
Idaho proximity to national parks is an untapped sales asset. When professors flew in to meet with the Stukent team, the experience of being in the region — near the Tetons, near Yellowstone — closed deals that conversations alone wouldn’t have. Stu found that bringing customers to him, letting them experience Idaho, was as powerful a sales tool as anything in his playbook. His current venture, National Parks Baseball Resort, is built entirely on that insight: families already give up their whole summer for youth baseball travel tournaments. They don’t get to go to national parks as part of it. What if they could? He’s building the Cooperstown of the West in Idaho Falls, with fields named Zion Field, Yosemite Field, and Mount Rainier Field. Baseball teams from across the nation would come to Idaho and check off bucket list items at the same time.
Fly out of Idaho Falls. A direct callout: when you factor in wear on your car, the probability of a snowstorm, parking, and likely hotels on both ends of a drive to Salt Lake City, the $100 to $150 premium on a flight from Idaho Falls isn’t a premium at all. And every time Stukent committed to flying out of Idaho Falls rather than Salt Lake, it helped the airport grow. It’s now expanded from three to six gates. Fly locally. Help build the infrastructure that makes building locally easier for everyone.
Get on the plane. Building a high-growth business in Idaho requires bringing money into Idaho. For most businesses, that means selling outside Idaho. The guidance to his sales team: if a deal will net you more than the cost of the flight, and you think you have a shot — tell the prospect you’ll be in their city next month and ask what day works to come by. Show up in person. Being with people converts.
Pass hats to smarter people. Stu wore every hat in both his early businesses. What he learned from raising investor money for Stukent was that capital gave him the ability to pass hats off faster — to people smarter than him at the things they needed to be done. It was measurably easier to run a $3 million company than a $300,000 company, and the difference wasn’t the complexity — it was that at $3 million, he had money to give people hats. He’s not prescriptive about whether to bootstrap or raise. But for businesses with capital-intensive seasons (Stukent made money in September and January, and had to pay sales reps for all the months in between), raising wasn’t optional.
Don’t apologize for promoting your business. Unapologetic self-belief is what got Rudy Ruettiger his movie. He played two plays his senior year at Notre Dame and decided that story deserved a film. He got laughed out of rooms. Notre Dame said no. The writers behind “Hoosiers” ignored him. Then he got stood up for a lunch meeting in California, walked out of the restaurant, complimented a whistling mailman because Rudy Ruettiger is that guy, and the mailman turned out to know where the screenwriter lived. That’s how Rudy got to knock on the door and say, “You’re going to write my movie.” Behind “Rocky,” Rudy is the most sold sports movie of all time. Stu’s application: if you as the leader of your business won’t wear the brand and push it forward, no one will. Brad Jacobs, who has built eight billion-dollar companies, still gets on podcasts with his company brand on his chest. Believe in what you’re building. Say it out loud. Don’t wait for permission.
What attendees got
Stu announced National Parks Baseball Resort on stage at RizeCon — the first public description of the project. He explicitly invited the room to follow along on Instagram and Facebook under @NationalParksBaseballResort and said he wants Idaho’s business community thinking about how they can be part of it. He’s at the hat-carrying stage, building something he openly acknowledged he can’t do alone.
One story that landed
The banker at RiseCon 2019. Stu was annoyed to be seated next to someone who made safe bets when everything he builds might not work. Then the banker knew his parents from high school in Blackfoot. Then a connection formed. Then three months later, that connection turned into millions of dollars from Idaho Central Credit Union flowing into a Stukent product that served every student in the state of Idaho. Stu used it to open his talk and then made the room live it: turn to the person on your right and whisper “you might make me millions.” You don’t know who it’s going to be. That’s why you show up.
“You can build big, high-growth businesses in Idaho. I’m a bit of a living proof of it, small compared to others, and I just hope that you know I’m here to cheer for you more than you’re going to cheer for me right now.” — Stu Draper
“Don’t apologize for promoting your business and pushing your brand. If you won’t, guess who will? No one.” — Stu Draper
About the speaker
Stu Draper is the founder of Stukent, an Idaho Falls-based education technology company that made the Inc. 5000 list ten times and has sold its simulations and e-textbooks to colleges and universities across the country and internationally. He is also the founder of Get Found First (digital marketing) and is currently developing National Parks Baseball Resort, a youth baseball tournament destination concept in Idaho Falls designed to draw families from across the nation while connecting them to Yellowstone, the Tetons, and the region’s national parks. He hosts the “Startups with Stu” podcast.