Caroline Bryant
Features Editor
After having heart surgery when he was younger, sophomore Nathan Calvary grew up more afraid of shots than going into the operating room.
Calvary would shiver at the sight of a needle, frequently needing to receive shots and his blood drawn post-operation to confirm surgery went well.
“I had a heart surgery when I was younger, so I had to get blood drawn all the time to make sure I was ok,” Calvary said. “I was more scared getting the shots than going into surgery, it was horrible… so I was like there has to be a better way.
One day Calvary would watch a YouTube video of a doctor using a teddy bear to distract a child from the incoming needle into his skin. He was shocked at how the stuffed plush kept the child from noticing their shot was complete, inspiring Calvary to create something better.
Like the other business majors, Calvary enrolled in the Shark Tank class. The class granted him the opportunity to start Incog-Needle. Incog-Needle is a needle cover that hides the needle when giving patients their shot. Its purpose is to prevent children from developing a fear of needles and prevent those who already have the fear from panicking.
While Calvary finished last place in the Shark Tank competition, he knew his idea was worth fighting for. After talking to his professor Dr. Matt Bernthal, he went to the Director of the Center for Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Justin Heacock a week after the competition ended.
Heacock, who founded the Seed-to-Scale Accelerator program, thought Calvary would be a great fit. Calvary then applied and was accepted.
In the program, Heacock showed him the preliminary stages of starting a business, what goals to make and how to achieve those goals. He achieved the first step by becoming a member of Catapult Lakeland.
While he doesn’t have many other mentors besides Heacock and Bernthal, he states the two are all he needs.
“Justin has been a humongous help,” Calvary said. “The Accelerator program gave me goals that I needed to do before I officially started and went into Catapult, which I thought was mundane.. but once I got into Catapult and started doing things, I realized how important it was.”
Since then, Calvary has won grant funding in competitions from Catapult and the 2023 Truist Bank Business Competition. According to the FSC official website, Calvary won third place in the Truist Bank Business Competition. He earned $2,000 of the $10,000 also awarded to Tafika Tickets by Happyson Kaunda and Immigrafy by alum Rafael Jorge.
He also earned $500 from the business program’s Plant the Seed Fund, a fund where students can apply for funds, no questions asked.
Additionally, he developed different prototypes of the Incog-Needle, replicating the cap of a crayon or pencil. Each prototype evolved based on how younger children perceive them.
“I have a bunch of younger cousins and they all hate needles,” Calvary said. “Even if they see a needle they’ll go crazy…so we would show them [the product] and they were fine, so that’s when I knew, ‘ok, we’re on to something.’”
Though they aren’t poking the needles into the children’s skin, their reaction says it all – they wouldn’t bat an eye if they did, just like the children in the YouTube video.
Currently, Calvary is working on processing three-dimensional images for his “prototype and prototype development.” He is also making a product demonstration video usable for customers and pitch competitions.
The end goal is to grow his business. And with two-and-a-half more years of college, he has plenty of time to do so.
