Mid x Midwest aims to connect 50 VCs with 50 startups; why this new meetup is coming to KC

Traveling throughout the U.S. for business, Dan Kerr regularly comes across investors who have heard rumblings about the burgeoning Kansas City tech startup ecosystem, he said.

But one problem persists: most of these potential funders have never stepped foot in Kansas City.

“Really what got my gears turning is that I have a big network of investors around the country who hear things about Kansas City — they hear really positive things [and] they want to come out, but they don’t have a focal point of when to do that,” Kerr said. “I also go to a lot of events in other regions, and I’ve seen some things that work really well to get connections going.”

Dan Kerr, Flyover Capital

So Kerr, a partner at Flyover Capital, started thinking about ways to get more venture capital firms to visit Kansas City and benefit early-stage tech founders in the region at the same time.

The result? Mid x Midwest, an invite-only event expected to connect 50 venture capitalists with 50 founders of KC-area B2B software companies for an afternoon of one-on-one interactions.

Scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 15 at the Hotel Kansas City, Mid x Midwest (MXMW) is accepting applications from founders through this Friday, October 21.

Any Kansas City-area founder of a venture-backed or venture-ready B2B software business should complete the 2-to-3 minute application, Kerr said.

Applicants from Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arkansas will also be considered. The 50 founders selected to participate can expect to be notified by the end of October, according to Kerr.

Click here to apply for Mid x Midwest.

Kerr hopes the event — which he’d like to see become an annual occurrence — will give early-stage tech founders in the region a well-deserved look from VCs to whom they might not otherwise have access.

“I know that we have great founders in Kansas City,” he said. “I don’t think our founders in general get as many shots on goal or as deep a network as they ought to have. And so the hope here is to create deeper connections, more interactions, and ultimately just get velocity moving faster for Kansas City founders.”

Click here to check out Startland News’ 2022 Kansas City Venture Capital-Backed Companies Report.

Mid x Midwest is an “experimental” collaboration among numerous key players in the Kansas City venture ecosystem, Kerr said, with the goal of helping local founders “level up” their companies.

The November gathering will coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week, although it is not an official GEW KC event, which Kerr described as a fortuitous coincidence that MXMW sponsors hope to use to their advantage.

“We’re actually working on leveraging some of the investors who are in town to do some [GEW] sessions the day after, and so that’s still a little bit TBD exactly how we’re going to make that work,” he said. “We’re gonna try to kind of plug people into the ecosystem while things are already going on that week, so hopefully it’s very complementary.”

The in-person interactions provided by events like Mid x Midwest are critical to founders as they bounce back from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kerr said.

“That’s part of why we wanted to do this, is to kind of start to bring people back together and increase velocity, increase momentum,” he said. “We don’t wanna stagnate — we want to keep pushing forward and growing, especially our tech ecosystem.”

Kerr added that more buy-in is necessary from the whole entrepreneurial and VC community in order to keep “creating success stories outside tech hubs” in communities like Kansas City and beyond.

“Kansas City was the inspiration for [Flyover Capital] in the first place,” he said. “We were formed by founders because some of their peers weren’t necessarily getting the funding that they deserved and that was keeping them here in the area.” 

“There’s a common thread with that in so many other communities around the country,” he continued. “I think Kansas City’s got great examples of founders. It’s an entrepreneurial city. I do think that we could be doing five times the level that we’re doing today, and I think we can leverage our regional strengths to get there.”