Today let’s visit a community college in western Nebraska. As we approach the headquarters building, we encounter a state-of-the-art electronic entry system. The provider of that high-tech alert system is located in rural Kansas.
Nick Strecker is a co-founder of INA Alert, the national company that created this technology. Nick is a native of Great Bend.
“There have been five generations of our family in the Barton, Russell, Ellis county area,” Nick said. After earning a fine arts degree at the University of Kansas and marrying his wife Laura, they moved back to Ellinwood.
“My father Monty is an entrepreneur and my mentor, and I spent a couple of years learning business principles from him. My mother is in education,” Nick said. “One day my dad asked if I could build technology for one of his businesses.”
Nick did so. It worked so well that Nick and other family members launched a technology projects and service company in 2010. Since it used an Instant Notification Application, they used those initials for the company name: INA Alert.
“My father taught me that you have to seek out and find your customers,” Nick said. “My mom, Catherine Strecker, did her dissertation on brain-based learning. She taught me that we need to teach technology in whatever way is best for the learner.”
Nick’s first major project was creating software that was used by the Kansas Board of Nursing to communicate with nurses. Then, companies with oil drilling rigs in central Kansas also needed communication systems, but they wanted video as well. This led INA Alert to connect surveillance cameras so as to remotely monitor performance and assure safety and security of the workers. The business grew from there.
