New Black & Veatch accelerator bent on changing the world, powered by LaunchKC
April 11, 2019 | Austin Barnes and Tommy Felts
A new accelerator powered by LaunchKC is Black & Veatch’s attempt to “create the world that we want,” said Hyleme George, director of the freshly announced IgniteX CleanTech program.
“It’s a world that we want to invest in to accelerate the adoption of sustainable infrastructure,” George continued. “What that means is a world where there’s clean water, clean energy available — a world where we fix climate change. It’s a world where we eliminate constraints on travel. It’s a portal where we can solve hunger.”
Click here to learn more about IgniteX.
With LaunchKC teasing the accelerator announcement earlier in the week, a crowd of entrepreneurs, civic leaders, and startup advocates gathered Wednesday afternoon at Boulevard Brewery to learn more about how the newly reformatted LaunchKC grant competition would evolve.
Click here to read more about the new LaunchKC format, which will power three, industry-specific accelerator programs, including IgniteX.
“We have had an incredible run the past five years,” said Drew Solomon, chair of the LaunchKC program, as the crowd sipped beer and noshed on hors d’oeuvres.
LaunchKC — coordinated by the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City and the Downtown Council of Kansas City — will be able to fund more companies and offer startups better support, as part of its collaborative efforts, he added.
Click here to learn about LaunchKC’s first accelerator partnership with Fountain City FinTech.
For its part, Black & Veatch will seek a cohort of startups focused on agricultural technology, machine learning and AI, renewable and distributed energy, mobility, and technologies or processes that simplify the world of engineering, the company said.
Keep reading below the photo gallery for more IgniteX program details.
“It’s really for the benefit of all of us here,” explained George, announced Wednesday as director of IgniteX. “Folks outside Black & Veatch may not realize that this journey started [three] years ago …”
At that time, Black & Veatch created a business incubator to promote job growth and entrepreneurial ideation, George added. The incubator already has spun out such projects as Solarhood, the company’s first-ever consumer product, and predictive analytics firm Atonix.
Startups eager to share in the company’s vision for the world can begin applying for the IgniteX accelerator next week, he added.
“These are big, bold goals and they sound crazy at times! But, the reality is — big, bold goals make for a wonderful story. Who doesn’t want to be part of a great story,” George said.
Applications for the accelerator will be open for 60 days, with final cohort selections being made in June and July, George said. Companies will relocate to Kansas City in August and take part in 75-day period of immersive programming.
IgniteX will culminate with a demo day in November, George added.
In addition to program resources, companies will also have the opportunity to win equity awards — in the traditional spirit of LaunchKC, Solomon explained.
“The bottom line of the new platform is to attract scalable companies to the city to create more jobs and opportunities while growing our economy,” Solomon said.
LaunchKC is eager to expand on its collaborative idea, he added. The announcement of a similar partnership that will form the grant competition’s HealthTech accelerator is anticipated in the coming months.
Featured Business
2019 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Kauffman Foundation rolls out $1.2M microlending program to help underserved entrepreneurs
Amid a swarm of 160 events as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation announced a new microlending program to spur investment in underserved entrepreneurs. In partnership with four microfinance lenders, the foundation issued a series of grants totaling $1.2 million that a will change the way the nonprofit microlenders capitalize their…
Scared away from networking events? Anti-social introverts can turn to tech
Networking strength comes in numbers — even for anti-social introverts, Jeremy A. Smith told a crowd Tuesday at Global Entrepreneurship Week. “Anti-social people, myself included, hate events,” he said. But like all other entrepreneurs, such introverts still must build and maintain actionable professional networks from which they can request and receive value, Smith said. In-person networking…
Longfellow Farm coworking the soil amid KC’s urban food desert
In a city ripe with coworking office spaces, there’s a hunger for similar environments outdoors, Ami Freeberg said. As with maintaining individual workplaces, traditional urban farming also can be isolating and expensive, the Longfellow Farm manager said. By working together, however, the collaborative process allows for shared resources, greater human expertise and, of course, more…
Procrastinating? Eat the frog, don’t chase the squirrels
On the metal wall in front of my desk, I’ve magnetically fastened a famous recommendation from Mark Twain. “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day,” the humorist from Missouri wrote. Though it can become an aspiration rather than a rule,…