Funding

Target Hill Capital defusing risk on startups between friends and family, seed funding stages

By Tommy Felts / November 5, 2018

An opportunity to deliver exponential impact in a community committed to entrepreneurship has resulted in the launch of Target Hill Capital –– an outside-the-box venture capital fund, Marshall Dougherty said.  “When we were involved [with previous startups], we compared notes and surveyed the startup ecosystem in Kansas City,” Dougherty said of the events that led…

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LendingStandard plans innovation upgrade with $2.5M investment from Flyover Capital

By Tommy Felts / November 5, 2018

An investment in innovation has landed Kansas City-based LendingStandard $2.5 million in investment funds following the close of a Series A funding round led by Flyover Capital, CEO Andy Kallenbach said. “These are folks that are well-known in Kansas City and have had software businesses in the past, and that’s a really rare combination,” Kallenbach…

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New investor report: Women-led startups more likely to get angel support than VC backing

By Tommy Felts / October 30, 2018

Angel investors support 10-times more women-led companies than venture capital-backed investors, revealed a first-of-its-kind report by the Kansas City-based Angel Capital Association. “It didn’t shock us,” said Marianne Hudson, executive director of the ACA, the world’s largest cohort of angel investors. Hudson cited previous ACA research that indicated 21 percent of angel investors had been…

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Jeff Lynch, Idle Smart

Idle Smart posts Series A round with KCRise Fund, multimillion-dollar investment support

By Tommy Felts / October 24, 2018

A multi-million dollar investment round has Kansas City-grown Idle Smart revving its engine and accelerating toward rapid growth in 2019, revealed Jeff Lynch, company president. “I think it’s a reflection of what the team has been able to create over the past few years,” Lynch said of Idle Smart’s completion of a milestone Series A…

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Zach Pettet, Fountain City Fintech; and Erika Klotz, PopBookings, KC Mythbusters

Human capital: KC Mythbusters challenges Kansas City to rethink how it supports startups

By Tommy Felts / October 18, 2018

A thriving startup ecosystem requires more stakeholders with skin in the game, said Eric Jorgenson. That means increasing direct participation — those actively and directly building or investing in startups that can potentially exit and see a talent and capital explosion that results in even newer startups — and de-emphasizing the need for and dependence…

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