(eager music) We're doing what would normally take a utility a decade, we're able to do system-wide in less than a month.

(eager music) Hi, I'm Dusty Birge, founder of Fast Forward, a software company based out of Kearney, Nebraska.

[Narrator] Dusty and Fast Forward are creating a better way for power companies to inspect the 6 million miles of power lines in the United States and catch problems before they lead to outages and fires.

Thermal cameras mounted on a vehicle capture images of 6,000 power poles a day.

Software then identifies hotspots that need repair.

We're trying to make as little amount of work for the utility as possible to implement the repair.

[Narrator] Dusty has been an entrepreneur since selling candy to grade school classmates.

After college, he launched archery, laundromat, and drone businesses, selling two of the three, and worked in the utilities industry.

Hello, my name is Melanie, and what is an aha moment for you?

In sales, it's important to understand that when you're offering something to a customer, it's super effective when you solve a problem so great that the customer can't not do business without your solution once you've shared it with them.

Hi, my name is Elijah.

How has your work evolved from the original idea?

We've continually had to innovate and pivot, specifically our hardware initiatives at the company.

It's really hard to do hardware in a company, and we've constantly had to make revisions and changes as we've continued our development.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth.

How do you measure success?

I think it's important to include the journey of the person's experience into how you measure their success.

People do make mistakes, but if you can avoid making the same mistake twice.

I value the ability to not make the same mistake twice just as much as I may be able to monitor somebody's success by qualitative metrics or tracking specific activities.

Hi, my name is Madyson.

Talk about how you use technology to help you innovate.

We're capturing so many images that it's really hard to process and manage those manually.

So we're having to use the latest methods in computer vision and machine learning to manage a volume of data that traditionally hasn't been used by our customer base.

Hi, my name is Brooke.

How are you still developing as an innovator and how are you still learning?

We're using technology that didn't exist a few years earlier, and so I've continued to innovate by surrounding myself with really talented people.

And if you surround yourself by a good team, you can accomplish a lot of stuff that you may otherwise not thought possible.

Hi, my name is Jaylyn.

What's your best advice for young innovators?

A skill that you can start now is learn how to be reliable.

I was brought up in a small rural community in Nebraska and my parents taught me how to be reliable.

And it wasn't until I joined the workforce when I realized that that's not a common trait everywhere.

And employers, friends, and family really appreciate having an employee or a person that they can rely on, and that's a skill that you can constantly refine that they can't take away from you.

So learn how to be reliable and a lot of doors will be open and you will be rewarded.

(eager music)