$12,500 from UNL’s New Venture Competition helped Karter Otte scale Pickup Lines Striping, a parking-lot repainting business he now runs full time while finishing his senior year.
Two years after starting with a spray can and door-to-door pitches, Otte serves schools, universities and commercial real estate clients across Nebraska, with rural schools a key target.
A new Graco 3900 paint sprayer improved job measurement, paint tracking and quoting, while AI tools help him estimate from satellite images, build quotes and analyze margins.
Otte now works with a friend, Riley, and aims to build multiple crews serving Nebraska and eventually the broader Midwest.