They met in Hollywood, but this startup found its ‘fertile field’ of dreams (and community) in Kansas

Startland News’ Startup Road Trip series explores innovative and uncommon ideas finding success in rural America and Midwestern startup hubs outside the Kansas City metro. This series is possible thanks to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which leads a collaborative, nationwide effort to identify and remove large and small barriers to new business creation.

WICHITA, Kansas — Startup culture in Wichita isn’t yet fully defined, said Robert Feeney, a California native-turned-Kansan. But the ecosystem’s potential to be shaped at the hands of the community has excited newcomers like him.

“There’s this hunger here for newness — and then if you add that to the friendliness and receptivity that I’ve experienced, Wichita is just such a fertile field for new startups,” said Feeney, the co-founder and chief vision officer of Knowledge as a Service, Inc. (KaaS). 

KaaS is a software development company known for its service solution, Ringorang — a platform that revolutionizes workplace training, permanently changing employee behavior and delivering measurable business results. Ringorang was first prototyped in 2007, and KaaS later formed around the solution in 2019 by Feeney and B.W. Barkley, who serves as co-founder and chief operating officer. 

Click here to learn more about Ringorang.

Initially leading their company virtually from the coasts (with Feeney in Silicon Valley and Barkley in New York City), the duo was taken down an unexpected path when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. 

“B.W. grew up in Wichita and ended up coming back during the pandemic because his wife was pregnant,” Feeney recalled. “After spending some time here, he said to me, ‘Dude, you got to come out here and check out the startup scene.’ So I did, and it was during the first annual Wichita Startup Week.”

Wichita Startup Week 

In partnership with Techstars, Wichita Startup Week is a week-long program featuring local and national speakers, networking, a pitch competition and more. Wichita Startup Week aims to connect individuals from all across the entrepreneurial ecosystem to discover new possibilities and share resources, said James Williams, the co-founder of Wichita Startup Week. 

Robert Feeney, co-founder of Knowledge as a Service, Inc. (KaaS) and Ringorang, speaks at Wichita Startup Week 2022

The volunteer-led effort piloted in 2021 and returned for its second program this week. 

Click here to read more about Wichita Startup Week.

Originally coming in as an outsider, Feeney returned to Wichita Startup Week with his company, KaaS, as one of the speakers and sponsors.

“What I found from being [at Wichita Startup Week in 2021] was that I was able to quickly get access to business leaders, government leaders, educational institute leaders, who would have taken me a year to get an appointment with in California,” Feeney said. “Being a technology startup doing software development in California is redundant. … But here, I knew we could be more special and really contribute to the startup scene.”

Feeney and Barkley made the decision to move their headquarters to “the heart of the country” in 2021. 

What they saw as Wichita’s greatest advantage: accessibility. 

“One could argue that there are more resources out there in California, but you also have a huge herd of people who are all clamoring through for those same resources,” Feeney noted. “Here, people know each other. Within a few weeks of being here, I already had meetings with the business leaders in town. It was just amazing how quick things can move here. 

“But I also never want to downplay the way resources are available to people,” he continued. “That’s why we are all at an event like [Wichita Startup Week]; we’re trying to make resources more centralized.”

Robert Feeney at the Wichita headquarters of Knowledge as a Service, Inc. (KaaS) and Ringorang

Startup energy 

Before thriving in the tech startup space, Feeney and Barkley were two young adults trying to make a name for themselves in Hollywood, Feeney recalled.

“I was there because I wanted to tell stories. I lost both of my brothers to suicide, and that lead me to wanting to tell stories that would inspire people to take on new behaviors to make their life better,” Feeney shared. “I met B.W. through a mutual mentor, who was like a second father to the both of us.”

Barkley shared with Feeney that he had an idea of storytelling through short, spread out messaging and repetition. But the more the duo thought about the concept, they realized that it was much more than a marketing ploy. It was how people’s brains operate, Feeney explained. 

Their concept became an early iteration of Ringorang. 

“We were in talks with Coca Cola, showing them that we could get an individual to go back to their site 10 times because there was a nudge, like a timed trivia question or activity, that was pulling people in,” he said. “… But this prototype was back during the recession in 2009, so no advertisers were going to pay what we needed for this early stage, expensive software.” 

The duo was ready to hang up the idea when one of Ringorang’s early investors, who was also the chief information officer at a utility company in Washington, asked them to look into a different industry than marketing — cybersecurity, Feeney recalled.

“He asked us, ‘If you can get people to go back to a Coca Cola campaign over and over again, could you get my IT employees to go over their training before we get audited?’” Feeney said. “… And the dang thing worked. We were able to prove that people would play the game [review training materials] and it would only take a few minutes of their day.”

Ringorang caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy, which gave the company grant money to shift the behaviors of how consumers use energy. Ringorang partnered with the agency for five years and was part of research trials that revealed a shift in human behavior through repetition. 

“Because [our technology] was published, B.W. and I looked at that and knew we could build a business around it,” Feeney said, noting that major tech company IBM is one of the customers that use KaaS’ solution, Ringorang.

Garvey Center Plaza in Wichita, home of Knowledge as a Service, Inc. (KaaS) and Ringorang

The view from the headquarters of Knowledge as a Service, Inc. (KaaS) and Ringorang in downtown Wichita

Garvey Center Plaza

Shortly after relocating KaaS to Wichita, Feeney and Barkley decided to move their company from fully virtual to an optional in-person office at Groover Labs, a coworking space in Wichita.

“B.W. and I prided ourselves on being able to run a company efficiently in a virtual way; but when you’re busy priding yourself on how good you are at something, you’re usually ignoring the things that are missing,” Feeney admitted. “There is a tone, an attitude that’s missed when you’re right there with people. It’s camaraderie.”

Growing at a rapid pace, KaaS was presented with the opportunity to move its team from Groover Labs to the historic Garvey Center Plaza, Feeney said.

“The Garvey Center is an older building that hadn’t had a lot of renovation done, but then this fellow, Nick Bonavia, stepped up and he has this amazing plan for renovation,” Feeney gushed. “We spoke with him about how bringing in tech companies to this space, it’s not just bringing the Garvey Center back to the present — but throwing it into the future. We could turn it into the next Rockefeller Center and make it someplace where it’s central and iconic. I think all entrepreneurs should keep their antenna up for creative ideas like this.”

KaaS officially moved into the Garvey Center in Spring 2022 and is hopefully just the first of many tech startups to move through the space, Feeney shared.

“We have a shot at turning this region into what is sometimes thought of as a ‘talent flight region’ to a talent destination,” Feeney said. “People will come here, like I did, and grow their business. … In five to 10 years, we’re going to be able to look back and see how we drove momentum and energy into building a startup culture here because this community really embraces their wins. And it takes the whole ecosystem.”

This story is possible thanks to 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