2021 Startups to Watch: Replica spins out job creation as urban planning goes data dense
January 13, 2021 | Tommy Felts and Austin Barnes
Editor’s note: Startland News selected 10 Kansas City firms to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. The following is one of 2021’s companies. Click here to view the full, ranked list of Startups to Watch — presented by sponsors Husch Blackwell and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Rapidly scaling Replica won’t slow down in 2021, Nick Bowden said, teasing a year that’s expected to be driven by widespread team growth — at a time when job creation couldn’t be more critical.
Elevator pitch: Replica is an enterprise data platform that delivers critical insights about the built environment — across people, mobility, economic activity, and land use.
• Founders: Nick Bowden, Alexei Pozdnukhov, Brett Naul, Kael Greco
• Founding year: 2019
• Amount raised to date: $11 million
• Noteworthy investors: Innovation Endeavors, Firebrand, Rise of the Rest
• Programs completed: None
• Current employee count: 41
“Because we’ve grown so fast, we can’t hire fast enough,” Bowden, CEO and co-founder, said of the Alphabet-born company’s scale up phase and what it could mean for the local and distributed workforce in the months ahead.
Click here to read more about the birth of Replica and how it was spun out of Alphabet in 2019.
“I’ve been here six years, but in the Midwest most of my life,” the founder and former CEO of mySidewalk and former head of Model Lab for Sidewalk Labs said. “We want to do whatever we can to advance the startup scene here and provide an opportunity for people to work at a company that may have historically been based only in the bay area.”
The company hopes to at least double its team in 2021, Bowden said, which currently is spread across Overland Park, California, Utah, Colorado, and New York (where an official office is planned post-pandemic).
“Pre-pandemic, the Bay area had, arguably, the best concentration of talent for really, really technically advanced work. But having a Kansas City office and being headquartered here and having an East Coast presence, it allows us to tap into a much wider talent pool,” he explained.
“Our offices are pretty cross-functional. You’ve got technical folks in Kansas City, non-technical folks in the bay area. My guess is we’ll [remain] pretty distributed.”
Click here to explore current job openings at Replica or to submit your resume for future consideration.
Such an increase in talent could also double revenue potential for the urban planning-focused SaaS platform — an operation that’s seen significant growth as a result of needs uncovered by the COVID-era.
“We’re a data platform for the build environment. When people stop moving or there are such volatile changes in movement, spending, land use — turns out that public agencies kind of have a desperate need to understand what’s happening,” he said in example of ways Replica has grown its customer base in recent months.
Bowden said 2021 stands to see the startup secure partnerships in more than half of the nation’s top 100 cities as it works to establish itself as one of the fastest growing enterprise SaaS companies in existence.
“We’ve grown exceptionally fast, even by fast-growing startup terms,” he said, adding fuel from its early days inside of Alphabet has certainly helped position the company for success.
“We’ve been remarkably fortunate in that regard. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more important time to work with the public sector, but a lot of the work we do is very much in service of trying to build and enable cities to be more friendly, equitable, accessible.”
The Kansas City Startups Watch in 2021 list is made possible by presenting sponsors Husch Blackwell, a value-driven law firm with offices in Kansas City, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, though independently produced by Startland News.
1) TripleBlind
2) LaborChart
3) Bar K
4) Ronawk
5) SureShow
6) Daupler
7) PMI Rate Pro
8) Scissors & Scotch
9) Replica
10) The Market Base
Startups to Watch is now in its sixth year, thanks to ongoing support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.
For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect at www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn
Featured Business
2021 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
C2FO marks $300B in funding for businesses as entrepreneurs navigate ongoing credit crunch
Rapid marketplace expansion in the first half of 2023 helped push Leawood-based C2FO — the world’s on-demand working capital platform — past the $300-billion mark in total funding to its customers. This record funding amount reflects invoices paid an average of 31 days early via C2FO’s platform. C2FO gets vital, low-cost capital into customers’ hands…
Froyo with a ’tini twist: Entrepreneur collaboration serves alcoholic frozen yogurt in KC
Kansas City is excited by the new flavor combinations popping up as two entrepreneurs give customers a taste of collaboration, said Isaac Collins, teasing a line of alcoholic frozen yogurt that’s already hitting cups in the metro. Through a partnership with KC-based Brain Freeze Mobile Daiquiri, Collins’ Yogurtini locations have begun a series of happy…
How Meshuggah Bagels ‘built a bakery without a recipe’ — now expanding to Liberty, Lawrence
Pete Linde tested 72 bagel recipes before hitting perfection with number 73, said Janna Linde. She knows because she tried every single test bagel. “Pete worked on that recipe for about a year. He had a notebook and took notes on every little tweak and modification he made. I’d see the big hand mixer come…
Royals preview ballpark of the future: Now they need to decide where to put it
Editor’s note: The following story was published by KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR member station, and a fellow member of the KC Media Collective. Click here to read the original story or here to sign up for KCUR’s email newsletter. The Royals are choosing between a stadium and entertainment district in Kansas City’s East Village or in North Kansas City. The…