News

Deborah Giudicessi, DIY Woodshop

‘Business is pointless unless you’re helping others’: Makerspace connects community through woodworking

By Tommy Felts / January 8, 2021

Building and creating with one’s own hands is an experience unlike any other, said Deborah Giudicessi.  “There’s that sense of accomplishment and pride that comes with building something,” said Giudicessi, founder of The DIY Woodshop in Olathe. “And learning how to create, it triggers this thought process that teaches you how to analyze and how…

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Isaac Thibault, PushIT Fitness

Look to your father, not the coach: Why one fit entrepreneur hopes to redefine ‘dad bod’

By Tommy Felts / January 7, 2021

Fatherhood — like athletics — is a physical and mental challenge with lifelong impacts, said Isaac Thibault, detailing the parallels at the core of his pandemic-pivoted career turn as a personal trainer. Launched this summer, Thibault’s PushIT Fitness targets married men with children — a demographic that allows the 25-year-old Overland Park entrepreneur an opportunity to…

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Jeremy Elias, TrackMy Solutions

TrackMy Vaccines allows patients to record COVID-19 vaccine reactions; use real-time data to ID trends

By Tommy Felts / January 7, 2021

With millions of Americans set to be inoculated with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine this year, Kansas City startup TrackMy Solutions transformed its technology into a web app with which patients can track their vaccine reactions, Jeremy Elias said. “There’s a system known as VAERS, or Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, that exists today for any…

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Riddhiman Das, TripleBlind

Mayo Clinic partnership proves TripleBlind’s privacy tech can be applied to healthcare, co-founder says

By Tommy Felts / January 6, 2021

A new partnership with Mayo Clinic will put Kansas City-stored TripleBlind’s data privacy promise to the test.  “We hope to demonstrate the potential of applying TripleBlind’s data privacy and data clean room solution to accelerate how we develop, test, and deploy AI solutions in healthcare, particularly amidst heavily regulated privacy concerns,” Riddhiman Das, co-founder and…

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Valentine Osakwe and Zerryn Gines, Peep Connect

How challenging norms could be Black founders’ key to overcoming lingering funding gap

By Tommy Felts / January 5, 2021

When authenticity and startup culture collide, Black founders and entrepreneurs of color often don’t see the same opportunities as their white counterparts, said Daniel Smith, contributing to a gap in funding that splits along racial lines. “I talk a certain way; I have different mannerisms; I like to dress a certain kind of way —…

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