arkansas
(14)
Calvin Goforth and the invention after the invention
After engineering rocket engines and selling his first company, Calvin Goforth turned to a different design problem: giving university inventions the people, money, and management needed to become businesses.
The Venture Center puts startups in the room with the buyer
In Little Rock, the most useful startup introduction may be to someone who can say no. The Venture Center has built its accelerator work around getting founders close enough to banks, producers and mentors to hear what needs changing.
Forge Institute puts cyber defense to work in Arkansas
A military career, a water utility, a promising startup: Forge Institute connects people who rarely share a classroom. Its wager is that national security gets stronger when those introductions lead to actual work.
Sharon Vogelpohl and the internship that never quite ended
An unexpected vacancy gave a college intern her first real responsibility. Three decades later, the president and CEO of mhp.si is still thinking about who gets the next chance.
Sami Brown and the business of making a town work
A bakery taught Sami Brown to think about expansion. With Blue Sky Growth Agency in Arkadelphia, she turned that ambition toward the systems, people, and small businesses that keep a community going.
ArcBest wants to save you the wait
A century-old freight company built a machine to empty trailers in minutes. Its costly retreat reveals why the next battle in logistics is as much about coordination as horsepower.
Allegiance Consulting Group and the Crisis Before It Exists
Most crisis firms arrive when the cameras do. This Little Rock consultancy would rather inspect the story, the stakeholders and the weak seams while everyone still has time to think.
The Ad Agency That Put the Brand Meeting Before the Ad
Before it bought media or drew a logo, Thoma Thoma liked to cover a conference room in giant Post-it notes. The Little Rock firm’s real product was not advertising. It was agreement.
Startup Junkie Gives Away the Advice. Arkansas Gets the Bet.
From enterprise pilots to a mushroom farm’s cooling bill, Startup Junkie puts free business help to work. Its Arkansas experiment depends on something less glamorous than a pitch: people willing to pay for somebody else’s start.
Tyler Stafford Left Bank Analysis to Rewrite One Banker's Blind Spot
A bank analyst, two doctors and an old friendship found a flaw hiding in plain sight. Panacea Financial grew from that observation - with Tyler Stafford trading research reports for the untidy work of building.
Walmart
Walmart is the world's largest retailer by revenue, operating a global network of supercenters, discount stores, neighborhood markets, Sam's Club warehouse clubs and a fast-growing e-commerce business. Founded in 1962 by Sam Walton in Rogers, Arkansas, the company built its scale on an 'everyday low prices' model powered by a highly efficient supply chain. Today it blends roughly 10,500 stores worldwide with digital commerce, retail advertising, a growing marketplace and AI-driven shopping tools, serving hundreds of millions of customers each week while employing about 2.1 million people.
Clint Sharp
Clint Sharp is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cribl, a data infrastructure company valued at $3.5 billion that helps Fortune 500 enterprises route, filter, and control their telemetry data at scale. Before building Cribl, he spent five years as Senior Director of Product Management at Splunk, where he and his co-founders identified the problem that would become Cribl's founding mission: data volumes were exploding, budgets were not, and enterprises needed a vendor-agnostic way to manage what goes where. Under Sharp's leadership, Cribl grew from a 2017 idea to more than $200M in ARR, serving 43 Fortune 100 companies - all while he also briefly served as interim Chief Revenue Officer during a pivotal growth moment.
Sawyer Hill
Sawyer Hill is a 24-year-old indie/alternative rock singer-songwriter from Siloam Springs, Arkansas, who spent a decade grinding dive bars before a single Instagram Reel turned 'Look at the Time' into a chart phenomenon. With 50+ million streams, a Billboard feature, a signing to (dis)harmony/AWAL, and a debut EP 'Heartbreak Hysteria' released in 2025, Hill is the rare viral story that actually has the chops to back it up - a deep baritone voice drawing comparisons to Eddie Vedder, Nick Cave, and Johnny Cash, wrapped in Southern alt-rock built for arenas.
Waylon Wyatt
Waylon Wyatt is an 18-year-old country singer-songwriter from Hackett, Arkansas who went viral in August 2023 after posting a TikTok from a construction site wearing his dad's company hat. Named after Waylon Jennings, he signed with Music Soup/Darkroom Records within two weeks of going viral. His debut EP 'Til the Sun Goes Down' amassed 225M+ streams, with 'Arkansas Diamond' earning RIAA Gold. His second EP 'Out of the Blue' (June 2025) - his first recorded with a full studio band - expanded his global reach via tours with Sam Barber and Zach Bryan in the UK. A Vevo 2026 DSCVR Artist to Watch, he is now headlining his own 35-date 'Everywhere Under the Sun' North American tour.