How tech is making every industry in Kansas search for ‘the next version of themselves’

Navigating the path ahead starts with filling state’s workforce with tech innovators who can reshape Kansas to match its wildly disruptive potential, leaders say

WICHITA, Kansas — The Sunflower State is seeing the seeds of tech momentum beginning to bloom, but Kansas has a long way to go before its time for harvest, said leaders of NXTUS, the KC Tech Council, and Flagship Kansas.Tech.

“We have a conservative culture in the state and in the region, but we are future-minded,” Mary Beth Jarvis, president and CEO of NXTUS, a Wichita-based entrepreneurial support organization, told a crowd this week at the Ad Astra Tech Summit. “Even the legacy industries — manufacturing and ag — are seeing the next version of themselves. Every industry is technology driven and every small company’s growth can be technology enabled.”

Kansas needs to be a state that leads innovators, not just trains employees, she said.

“We’re really good at the latter,” Jarvis explained. “We’re not quite as intentional about the former, and that starts in the classroom. It starts at home and starts everywhere.”

Jarvis — along with Kara Lowe, president and CEO of the KC Tech Council, and Luis Rodriguez, advisory board member for Flagship Kansas.Tech — gave the State of Kansas Tech Industry address at Wednesday’s Ad Astra Tech Summit, which took place among events organized for Wichita Startup Week.

The one-day Ad Astra summit included keynote speaker Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”), tech awards, and breakout sessions for industry, workforce, startup, and education.

Kara Lowe, KC Tech Council, presents data from the KC Tech Specs report during the State of Kansas Tech Industry session at the Ad Astra Tech Summit, which took place among events organized for Wichita Startup Week; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

Drilling into the gaps

Kansas boasts 70,850 tech workers, ranking 29th in the country, according to the KC Tech Council’s KC Tech Specs V.07, which includes data for both sides of the state line. But in population, Kansas ranks 35th.

“We’re punching a little bit above our weight class in terms of the density of the tech industry,” Lowe explained. “I think that’s something to lean into. I think that’s a signal of momentum.”

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Another signal of momentum, Lowe noted: Kansas ranks 12th in the percentage of tech jobs added in 2022 to 2023.

“We were the highest-ranking Midwestern state in that number,” she continued. “That is good news that is reflective of a lot of the economic development work that we are doing. And that number promises to continue to become more aggressive as we aggressively pursue massive economic development projects that carry with it a massive tech workforce.”

“But that also carries with it the obligation to fill that massive tech workforce and the obligation to build the right pipelines, to prepare and create the right talent for those jobs,” Lowe added.

About 20,000 tech jobs are open in the state already, with not enough computer science graduates in the surrounding states to fill them, she said, plus a fifth of the state’s tech industry workers are nearing retirement.

“Of course, we need to attract people to our beautiful, free state,” Lowe said. “I love the state of Kansas. It is a great place to live. We definitely have the cost of living and quality of life arguments going for us. So a focus needs to be on traction.”

“We also need to be thinking about pivoting folks into tech careers, partnerships, internship opportunities, upskilling, reskilling,” she added. “These are all part of the overall kind of talent strategy that our state needs to pursue to be able to close the gap on this open tech job number, because we can’t fill it with CS graduates alone.”

Although Kansas is punching a little above its weight in terms of tech density, Rodriguez agreed, the state is still lagging behind neighbors Missouri and Colorado.

“We are growing, but we are certainly not leading,” he explained. “Relative to our population size, there’s more opportunity in Kansas that we need to be unleashing.”

One asset needed for Kansas to keep pace: more robust broadband development, he noted.

“We have to accelerate that if we’re going to create job opportunities for the rest of the Kansas population and move our numbers up,” he said. “It’s a model that’s working in other Midwestern, rural states, so we need to keep that up. We need to get behind it with more energy. It’s an important driver of our growth rate.”

To unleash more opportunity, Rodriguez continued, school districts in the state need to do a better job with computer science education.

“It amounts to this: there’s no plan at the state level or no imminent resources and we’re still very far behind,” he acknowledged. 

Venturing forward

Kansas has an active startup ecosystem, but still lacks game-changing venture capital investment, Jarvis lamented.

Luis Rodriguez, Flagship Kansas.Tech, speaks during the State of Kansas Tech Industry session at the Ad Astra Tech Summit, which took place among events organized for Wichita Startup Week; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

“There is an impressive amount of startup support systems around this state that are going to have the backs of those folks who have the courage to turn their tech knowledge and their entrepreneurial drive into a venture,” she explained, noting organizations like Flagship, NXTUS, NetWork Kansas, KC Tech Council, Pipeline, and Digital Sandbox KC. “They’re the connective tissue that provides mentorship, resources, and programs to educate.”

And while growth capital availability has much room to grow, she acknowledged, there’s never been more institutional capital entities or dollars at work in the state — specifically noting venture capital firms like Kompass Kapital, Flyover Capital, KCRise Fund, Firebrand Ventures, and Iron Prairie Ventures, plus Mid-America Angels, Women’s Capital Connection, and Accelerate Venture Partners.

“We’ve really been intentional about building these systems up so that the courageous innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow — the ones that are in your classrooms, the ones that are in your companies — have resources in the game,” she noted.

But there are still gaps, Jarvis said, as 80 percent of capital goes to the top three states in the U.S.

“It is not yet light work to help high potential Kansas startups grow and get through their growth stage,” she added. “Too many stagnate, both in terms of finding capital and in terms of connecting to their customers. So we’re working on it.”

Kansas Tech Award Winners announced at the Ad Astra Tech Summit:

• Startup of the Year — Weavix
• Student of the Year — Ayaan Parikh, CEO of Novus Network
• Teacher of the Year — Vanessa Sawyer, Eisenhower Elementary School in Wellington
• Community Innovator of the Year — Rob Dickson, chief information officer for the Wichita School District
• Visionary of the Year — Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover, Groover Labs