Minority-Led
What started as an opportunity to meet interesting people and showcase innovative ideas to investors has turned into a once-in-a-lifetime shot at elevating five of Kansas City’s women-led startups on an international stage, said Shea Geist, beaming. “My husband made the application and I was like … ‘Whatever, it’s a million to one chance,’ so…
Born in the barber’s chair, Kansas City-based ScheduleMe could take more than a little off the top for service-based retailers. The startup plans to use artificial intelligence to groom the haphazard scheduling process entirely, its co-founders said. “We discovered that [our barbershop] was having issues with scheduling. What we wanted to do was try to…
As the number of teams left standing in the Enactus U.S. nationals started to dwindle, members of the competitive entrepreneurial development program’s team at the University of Missouri-Kansas City rode a pulsating wave of excitement and emotion, recalled Ali Brandolino. “I started crying,” added Brandolino, UMKC Enactus vice president of operations. “It was the most…
Opportunity Hub is about building strength in numbers, said Rodney Sampson, a feat that can only be accomplished in Kansas City through inclusive and intentional ecosystem building. “The bottom line is that it takes everybody to be a stakeholder at some level,” said Sampson executive chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based OHUB. “The thesis of a…
Ambitious startups need to believe they can become Kansas City’s next billion-dollar company, said John Thomson, urging confidence — and the ability to roll with the punches — in the face of risk. “Accomplished entrepreneurs who I’ve met … they just did it. Of course it was risky, and it might fail, but they went and…