Plano-based startup competition CodeLaunch is launching a reality show on YouTube to chronicle this year’s installment of its annual contest, and a Frisco startup is among the contestants.

Well Water Finders celebrates its win at the 2025 CodeLaunch World Championship [Photo: CodeLaunch]

The first of four episodes of Next Founder Up dropped on Aug. 5. The series will follow the six startups competing for CodeLaunch’s U.S. championship.

CodeLaunch says in a press release that the show will provide an “unfiltered look at what happens before founders step on to the competition stage,” including product development and pitch preparation, to show what it’s like to build a startup company under pressure.

“Next Founder Up is about more than startups and pitches,” said CodeLaunch president and founder Jason W. Taylor in a statement. “It’s about people willing to bet on themselves.”

Taylor started CodeLaunch in 2012 and grew it from an accelerator for early-stage startups into a traveling competition that includes companies from the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The program offers coaching and training to the startups that compete. Taylor also founded Frisco-based software development firm Code Authority, and Plano-based digital services company Improving acquired both businesses in 2019, a deal that gave CodeLaunch the ability to scale up and include more companies, Taylor told Entrepreneur magazine.

North Texas startup makes finals

Six startups advanced to this year’s U.S. finals from a pool of 291 applicants. Among them is Frisco company Drip Inventory, which makes an RFID inventory tracking system for the hospitality industry to improve efficiency.

Drip founder Riley Demaree said in a statement that CodeLaunch “has challenged and pushed our business to be the best version of itself.”

The Aug. 26 finale of Next Founder Up, planned as an “interactive livestream,” will let audience members vote in real time for their pick to take home the title.

The other U.S. finalists are Illinois-based Collars, a hiring platform built for skilled trade workers; Utah-based Pollen Sense, which measures airborne pollen and bioaerosols with automated sensors; and New York-based Travel Spoken, an AI platform that turns user-generated travel content into bookable experiences. Also competing are Virginia-based game developer Two Robots Studios, which is building a multiplayer strategy card game set in a sci-fi universe of robots and factions, and New York-based agricultural biotech company Unibaio, which is building a nano-engineered platform designed to improve how crops absorb nutrients and agrochemicals, according to the companies.

The winner of the U.S. competition will go on to compete against CodeLaunch winners from Canada and Mexico for a grand prize of $50,000.

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