2025: Roy is an app designed to create a conduit between fans and college athletes they want to support through the NCAA’s “Name-Image-Likeness” payment system. Cale Johnston, who created ClickSwitch, the app that helps consumers switch banks, saw NIL as a banking challenge and hopes Roy will make it easier for the have-nots in the NIL game to aggregate funds to keep their best players in Dinkytown. Roy is still in beta, but Johnston sees 2025 as the year it “goes from zero to 100.” That involves getting its name and branding into the sports marketplace while initially focusing on Tier 2 sports (hockey, volleyball) where athletes are less insulated by agents. “We’re getting good feedback,” he says. “Now we need to get the athletes involved.”

2020: Since founding his fintech company ClickSWITCH in 2014, Cale Johnston has led the company to nearly 100 percent annual revenue growth. In 2018, he helped secure $3.5 million in Series A and $13 million in Series B financing; in 2019, the company hired 17 new employees (taking it to 50 total), moved to a new office in the North Loop, and rolled out its new application program interface, which allows financial institutions and consumers to design and build their own custom user interface. Johnston holds two registered patents for this technology and has another pending. He has managed to break into and become a key player in a notoriously difficult industry in just a matter of years.