The Cubby, an online marketplace for student artists, wins Top Gun and its $25K prize

The Cubby, a startup out of Colby College that has launched an online marketplace for student artists to sell their work, has won the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs’ Top Gun Showcase event along with a $25,000 cash prize.

The event, which was held virtually the evening of May 26, featured pitches from eight finalists who completed this year’s Top Gun startup-training program. Maine Technology Institute provided the $25,000 grand prize.

The Cubby, which Maine Startups Insider profiled just last week, is an online marketplace where student artists and makers get exposure and sell their work. Besides the platform serving only students, one of The Cubby’s other selling points that differentiates it from more well-established online art marketplaces like Etsy is that 100% of the sale proceeds goes directly to the student artist.

Josh Kim, a senior at Colby in Waterville, founded the company last year and runs it with the help of four fellow students. It launched its online marketplace in February and already hosts more than 600 artists from 120 college campuses. The site currently sells between 10 and 30 unique art pieces per week, according to Kim.

Kim and The Cubby was one of 29 companies that participated in this year’s Top Gun program across four regional cohorts (Portland, Lewiston/Auburn, Waterville and Bangor). The 15-week program began in January and after a series of regional pitching events, culminated in the final Showcase event with two finalists from each of the four regions pitching.

Beside The Cubby, the other finalists were:

• Mohamed Awil, Community Staffing Partners (Lewiston)
• Jennifer Banis, Stay FnB (Lewiston)
• Jason Hine, Halo Med, LLC (Portland)
• Brenden Westin, DuraBike, LLC, (Portland)
• David Pier, DenVantage Small Business (Bangor)
• Emma Richardson, Co-Exist (Bangor)
• Heather Kerner, The Good Crust (Waterville)

Heather Kerner, owner of The Good Crust in Waterville, won the Michael Sheehan Memorial Award, which comes with a $5,000 prize. Portland based law firm Preti Flaherty also awarded its annual Michael Sheehan Memorial Award of $5,000 to Heather Kerner, owner of The Good Crust.

“The broad range of companies and diversity of the entrepreneurs presenting at our 2021
Showcase demonstrates that the Maine entrepreneurial spirit is strong and thriving despite
the turmoil of a pandemic. We are proud of each and every one in the Top Gun Class of
2021,” Tom Rainey, executive director of MCE, said in a statement.

The Top Gun program was created in 2009 and its inaugural class comprised a dozen entrepreneurs in Portland. To date, more than 300 entrepreneurs have gone through the Top Gun program, which consists of hands-on training taught by subject matter experts in finance, business law, marketing, and other critical aspects of business development.

The judges at this year’s Top Gun Showcase event were Patrick Arnold, co-founder and CEO of New England Ocean Cluster; Jay Friedlander, Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business at College of the Atlantic; and Beth Shissler, president and chief sustainability officer of Sea Bags.

MCE’s partnered with the University of Maine, Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and the Harold Alfond Institute for Business Innovation at Thomas College to run this year’s Top Gun program.