Entrepreneurial stakeholders say 2021 helped streamline and bolster local resources that could make Wichita a startup hub.
And while Wichita-based startups are increasingly taking advantage of the local scene, the bigger future could be now for several young companies.
From hiring and training to construction and financial literacy, technology and the world’s adaptation to life in a pandemic are driving ideas and operations into a new year and priming several local entrepreneurs for major potential growth in the year ahead.
Here are six Wichita startups to watch in 2022:
PLOT
Founder: Chris Callen
Website: www.getplot.com
Differentiator: A technology platform billed as boosting simplifying and enhancing the communication process on construction projects.
Any startup idea that grows out of Koch Industries Inc. is bound to raise eyebrows.
That was case for PLOT, a construction communication platform that in November announced that Wichita-based Koch had joined Indianapolis-based High Alpha Innovation as pre-seed investors in the company.
“It’s all about elevating the industry to be a little bit more efficient and collaborative and accepting of new technology tools,” PLOT’s co-founder and construction-industry veteran, Chris Callen, said last fall.
Similar collaboration between Koch and High Alpha helped define the early concept of PLOT last year, priming the company for growth in 2022.
Plans this year include hiring for engineering talent and engaging a client base to provide feedback on the platform.
The business could provide remote work opportunities for those engineers, while construction contractors, which can connect with PLOT via its website, will help build out a product Callen sees has having industry-changing potential.
“Construction technologies … have often focused too much on documents and processes rather than the teams and people in them,” Callen said. “In building PLOT, we’ve expanded our focus to the lifeblood of a construction site — the workers and their teams — who have never had a software built to fully address their communication needs.”
Knowledge As A Service
Founders: Robert Feeney and B.W. Barkley
Website: www.ringorang.com
Differentiator: KAAS’ Ringorang app is a training platform that allows employers to continually boost employee proficiency.
Knowledge As A Service (KAAS) has put itself on a path to be a company helping build Wichita’s technology workforce by helping all industries build up employee skills.
After landing its operations in Wichita in 2021, the company expects its Ringorang human behavioral training app to help power it to continued growth in 2022.
“When we came here from Silicon Valley, we made a commitment to be all-in on Wichita, growing our company, our product and making a difference in the startup community here,” COO B.W. Barkley said.
KAAS announced plans in June 2021 to move its operations to Wichita and hire around 40 workers over the next 12 months.
The company ended 2021 by signing a lease for its headquarters in Garvey Center and continue to interface with potential customers for whom KAAS leaders think their training app will boost everything from worker efficiency to workplace safety.
It has also helped pioneer crowd-funding for a startup locally — possibly helping craft a financing blueprint other Wichita companies can use — as its Wefunder campaign is helping raise the capital to create the new jobs.
Plain Solutions
Founders: David Thorne and Paul Peloquin
Website: www.plainsolutions.dev
Differentiator: Financial wellness platforms streamline financial snapshots for industry-level clients and provide easy benchmarking and education for individual consumers.
When the market talks, listen.
That was 2021 legacy of what was then Legacy Book, a Wichita-based financial wellness app.
As existing client conversations dried up amid Covid-19, CEO David Thorne and CTO Paul Peloquin streamlined what customers liked best about their wealth management app.
Dubbing it Plain Wealth, the offering is now under the umbrella of Plain Solutions, which heading into 2022 also includes Thumbscore — a financial tracking and literacy platform that in January will join the Iowa-based Global Insurance Accelerator program.
Plain Wealth, meanwhile, was last year picked up by Redtail Technology, putting the app in front of tens of thousands of financial advisors nationwide.
The company also picked up a partnership with insurance giant TIAA, making its financial wellness platform available to 40 million teachers and other professionals around the country and bringing into the fold a customer with a market value of more than $1 trillion.
“The doors that are opening right now are not the small doors,” Thorne said. “We’re hunting what we want to eat. And they’re the big doors and right now they’re all open. We were looking for base hits and we got a home run.”
Quick Hire
Founders: Angela Muhwezi-Hall and Deborah Gladney
Website: www.getquickhire.com
Differentiator: A hiring app uses swipe technology to quickly match employers and job seekers.
QuickHire rolls in 2022 in a growth mode, on the back of exploding demand from the skilled trade and service sectors for which its hiring app is catered.
The company was founded in 2020 by Wichita sisters Deborah Gladney and Angela Muhwezi-Hall who, last year, became the first Black women entrepreneurs in Kansas to raise more than $1 million in seed funding.
By the end of last year, QuickHire had amassed more than 60 company customers and had reached more than 11,000 job seekers on its platform.
Eyeing continued demand for labor, particularly within the restaurant industry, the company in 2022 expects continued growth that will target Wichita and Kansas City, though regional growth throughout the Midwest is also expected.
That growth will also include a new scheduling feature for customers and the recent addition to the QuickHire team of Doo-Dah Diner co-owner Timirie Shibley as the company’s partnership manager.
The QuickHire story has also been highlighted by media outlets ranging from The Guardian to Forbes, raising the profile of a business that became as an early pandemic pivot by its founding sisters.
“QuickHire is bigger than just an HR technology company,” Gladney says. “We’re underserved founders helping underserved workers in an underserved market.”
Voltage
Founder: Graham Krizek
Website: www.voltage.cloud
Differentiator: Enterprise-grade infrastructure and services for Bitcoin.
Ask local entrepreneurial stakeholders which startups they are watching in 2022 and one name invariably pops up: Voltage.
The young technology company provides infrastructure and services in the cryptocurrency sector, focusing exclusively on Bitcoin.
Voltage can not only help customers get up to speed on Bitcoin, but is various offerings — Lightning Nodes, Flow, Bitcoin Nodes and BTCPay Server — also maximize crypto-efficiency.
Launched in 2020 by software engineer Graham Krizek, the company has quickly fashioned itself as a navigator through the complicated world of Bitcoin.
And that has landed the Wichita startup at the forefront of revolutions in the world of finance.
In December, San Francisco-based Bitwage leveraged Voltage to help process the world’s first payroll payments using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. The transaction offered a glimpse of a payroll future where digital compensation can be made by the hour or even the minute.
"We're very excited to make it even easier for anyone to accept bitcoin payments both on-chain and via the Lightning Network,” Krizek told Bitcoin Magazine last year. “We've removed virtually all of the complexity to getting started. It's never been easier to accept bitcoin for your project or business directly to your wallet."
Lawn Buddy
Founder: Steven Werner
Website: www.lawnbuddy.com
Differentiator: A technology platform that streamlines scheduling, invoicing, payments and other business functions for lawn and landscaping providers.
One of the company’s at the forefront of Wichita’s entrepreneurial resurgence in recent years has been Lawn Buddy.
And the company, founded in 2016 by Steven Werner, heads into 2022 eyeing much more than just the yard.
Already having amassed customers in all 50 states, Lawn Buddy last fall rolled out a new subscription plan it believes will help attract more customers within its core industry — but it also secured funding it will use to help it broaden its reach into other industries.
The technology company last year closed on a $1.5 million funding round that will in part be used to help it make its Blyss offering, a similar platform to the Lawn Buddy app rolled out in October 2020, more directly available to to the electrical and home remodeling industries.
That opens up an even broader potential customer base to a local startup that already grew its sales volume by 300% during the pandemic as people utilized its technology to facilitate social distancing.
And it will help keep Lawn Buddy ahead of what Werner sees as an economic revolution in Wichita.
“I firmly believe that technology is the new oil and gas or aviation for the city,” he says.
