Several years ago, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce crafted an initiative to make Kansas City America’s most entrepreneurial city. While Kansas City hasn’t quite reached that level yet, it’s moving in the right direction.
A number of companies have either relocated their headquarters to the metro area or made a strategic decision to expand here. Their shared reasons include a supportive entrepreneurial community and access to both prospective customers and top-notch talent, partly driven by local bigwigs like Garmin Ltd. and Cerner Corp.
Entrepreneurs commonly cite how the Kansas City community willingly makes key introductions, even when there’s nothing personal to gain in return.
Health tech startup Sara Health Inc. relocated from Los Angeles to Kansas City in 2018 after being accepted into the Techstars Kansas City accelerator program. Two of the three co-founders are Los Angeles-area natives. A main driver in relocating was the support it received from Overland Park-based Bardavon Health Innovations LLC, which provided valuable advice and agreed to help the startup design a PT study to measure patient outcomes and validate the technology.
"We all were in consensus that we're going to Kansas City,” Sara Health co-founder Valeed Malik said during a previous interview. “There’s a great entrepreneurial culture here that's growing very rapidly. It's a give-first mentality.”
Another standout is Kansas City’s wealth of entrepreneurial resources. It’s home to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which conducts entrepreneurial research, awards grants to organizations that support entrepreneurs and aims to foster economic independence by advancing educational achievement and entrepreneurial success.
In addition to the Kauffman Foundation, here’s a list of the entrepreneurial resources you should know:
Entrepreneurial resources and educational programs
- Enterprise Center in Johnson County – the non-profit houses multiple programs, including the Fountain Innovation Fund, Mid-America Angels Network and Women’s Business Center, which provides educational training sessions and one-on-one business counseling services to female business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. ECJC also offers a variety of educational programming, from perfecting one’s pitch to securing mentors.
- KCSourceLink – educates entrepreneurs about available resources based on their specific needs and is a lead organizer of Kansas City’s annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, which includes networking and educational workshops related to running a business
- Entrepreneur Business Basics – offers a 12-week program that trains Black entrepreneurs on how to start or build a sustainable business
- LaunchCode – teaches participants coding skills for free and connects them to paid apprenticeships
- KC Tech Council – offers networking events, reports on Kansas City’s tech scene and brought tech apprenticeship program Apprenti to Kansas City. Locally, the paid apprenticeship program includes training in software development, IT business analysis and cybersecurity at no cost to the apprentice.
- 1 Million Cups – a weekly event started by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to network, pitch their business to an audience and receive feedback
- Mid-Continent Public Library’s Square One Small Business Services – supports local entrepreneurs through business workshops, access to information and one-on-one consulting
- ESHIP Kansas City – engages entrepreneurs and community leaders to grow trust, connectivity and equity for entrepreneurs in neighborhoods most disconnected from the traditional entrepreneurial ecosystem. It also connects entrepreneurs to mentors, local resource organizations and one-on-one business coaching through The Toolbox small business resource center in Kansas City, Kansas, inside The Stable coworking facility at 1303 Central Ave.
- KC Collective – an organization founded by startup founders for startup founders. It leverages the collective network to offer introductions, mentorship and access to more than $1 million in startup perks from companies such as Shopify, HubSpot and AWS. It also hosts events, from networking to pitch practices.
- Kansas City SCORE – provides training, mentoring and other support to help small businesses succeed
- OHUB Kansas City – hosts a a six-month startup boot camp that aims to help minority businesses scale and connect with culturally appropriate mentors. The boot camp covers topics such as funding, talent placement and in-demand technology. Another draw is OHUB's monthly event series for entrepreneurs. OHUB is intentionally focused on increasing authentic diversity, equity and inclusion in the tech, startup and venture ecosystem.
- The Toolbox — offers a resource center in Kansas City, Kansas, with free professional services and programs for small businesses of various sizes. The center was started to address a lack of entrepreneurial support in Wyandotte County and for entrepreneurs facing language barriers.
Funding
- AltCap – a community development financial institution (CDFI) that aims to increase access to capital in communities and businesses that don't fit the mold for funding from mainstream financial institutions
- Pure Pitch Rally – an annual pitch contest for tech startups in the Kansas City area that provides funding as well as access to educational boot camps on topics such as branding, pitching and funding
- Five Elms Capital – invests in business-to-business software companies with $2 to $20 million in annual revenue
- KCRise Fund – invests side-by-side with other institutional venture capital investors in early-stage companies based in Kansas and the western half of Missouri
- Digital Sandbox KC – provides proof-of-concept grants and connections to other companies to help early-stage startups grow and build out prototypes
- Generating Income For Tomorrow (G.I.F.T.) – a nonprofit that provides grants ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 to Black-owned businesses in Kansas City's urban core. The grants also come with 12 months of technical assistance, which includes Entrepreneur Business Basics and accounting, legal, marketing, branding and design services.
- Novel Growth Partners – revenue-based financing venture fund that provides flexible capital solutions to early-stage software companies
- Fountain Innovation Fund – funds early-stage startups in the Kansas City metro to bridge the gap between proof-of-concept and market validation
- Leawood Venture Capital – invests in disruptive early-stage technology companies nationwide
- Firebrand – provides seed-stage funding to “exceptional teams obsessed with solving a big problem in a better way”
- Flyover Capital – invests in companies that are transforming middle-America’s largest industries through business-to-business software for finance, insurance, logistics, real estate, cybersecurity and more
- Mid-America Angels – a regional network of accredited investors dedicated to identifying and funding the most promising early-stage companies in the Kansas and Missouri region
- Women’s Capital Connection – a regional network of accredited angel investors that invests in promising women-owned and women-led companies in the Midwest region
- Innovation in Motion (iiM LLC) – invests in early-stage companies in the U.S. and Canada in the agriculture, animal health and human health industries
Accelerator and fellowship programs
- ScaleUP! Kansas City – a 16-week program that aims to help Kansas City-area businesses grow to, and surpass, the $1 million mark
- Techstars Kansas City – a three-month program that connects startups to mentors, funding and other resources
- Pipeline Inc. – a yearlong entrepreneurial fellowship program for high-growth entrepreneurs in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. The business development program includes workshops, mentoring and networking among Pipeline members.
- The Porter House KC – focuses on entrepreneurs in the urban community and provides a 15-week small business development program and a 12-week mentoring program for small businesses with $200,000 or less in annual revenue
- LaunchKC – partners with Kansas City-area businesses to host a variety of accelerators for tech startups
- OHUB Kansas City – leads an accelerator, which comes with a $50,000 investment, and a pre-accelerator that helps startups connect with expert mentors, market makers and investors.
Did we miss a company or organization that should be on the list? Let us know by emailing Leslie Collins at lcollins@bizjournals.com.
