This week’s 1 Million Cups at the Kauffman Foundation featured startups pitching a proprietary custom fastener for engineering solutions and a private education model for ambitious mid-career women interested in high-tech.

Harold Hess, founder of Enduralock, is also a practicing neurosurgeon. He explained how he had adapted his previous invention of a permanent locking fastener for use in spinal surgery into a vibration-resistant fastener for mechanical engineering applications, including the aerospace industry.

Hess said that custom versions of his tight-locking titanium fastener, which also is reversible and reusable, could be used to secure passenger seats in airplanes or to build jet engines. It could also be used in “multiple verticals,” such as automobiles, trains, farm machinery, bridges and construction projects in earthquake-prone areas.

Next up was Jennifer Shaw, founder of Bella Minds, who cited a telling statistic: Although women make up half of the overall workforce, only 26 percent are involved in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce.

To increase that number, Bella Minds offers intensive workshops for motivated women in the middle stages of their working lives who want to learn more about the tech field, as well as other facets of professional growth to advance their careers.

The ultimate goal of the company, Shaw said, is to take women “from being technical consumers to technical masters,” as well as to teach them how to be financially independent and stable.

“We are actually creating … ambition in our students,” she said.