Global startups plug into Topeka: How Kansas connections are powering their innovation

TOPEKA — Collaboration in the Midwest is just a call away, said Romaine Redman. It’s a reality that sets the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem apart, he added, and a heartland trait that seeds Topeka’s Plug and Play accelerator with the potential for international impact.

Romaine Redman, chief innovation and strategy officer for the Kansas Department of Commerce, right, speaks during a panel conversation at Plug and Play Topeka’s Expo Day; photo by Tommy Felts, Startland News

“I pick up the phone and I call someone, and they’re here and ready to go,” explained Redman, chief innovation and strategy officer for the Kansas Department of Commerce. “That is a very powerful tool, a very powerful thing that we have here in the Midwest. That is what is driving us forward.”

The importance of regional partnerships was at the forefront Thursday during Plug and Play Topeka’s highly anticipated Expo Day.

Organized alongside backers from Go Topeka, Hill’ Pet Nutrition, Kansas State University, American AgCredit, American National, CoBank, Farm Credit Services of America, the event featured five agtech (Batch 10 from Plug and Play Topeka) and five animal health startup companies (Batch 8).

Each startup completed the nine-month accelerator program and on Thursday participated in live pitches, demos of products/services, and conversations around industry innovation. The lineup included scaling startups from Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Australia, Argentina, and Israel.

Startup founders from such far-flung locales as Australia (Earthodic), Baltimore (Natáur), and Germany (MicroHarvest) listen to fellow entrepreneurs during startup pitches at the Plug and Play Expo Day in Topeka; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

Lindsay Lebahn, director at Plug and Play Topeka, speaks with community partners during a groundbreaking event for Link Innovation Labs in Topeka; photo by Tommy Felts, Startland News

“We believe that innovation can’t happen in silos,” said Lindsay Lebahn, director of Plug and Play Topeka, which operates with a mission to drive innovation by connecting entrepreneurs, corporations, and investors. “It takes our corporations, our startups, our cities, our government, our regulators. Everyone has to come in there to really create this ecosystem of change.”

Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play first announced plans to enter the Topeka market with an animal health and agtech focused program in fall 2019. Since then, the program has accelerated 170 startups, resulting in 72 NDAs, 44 pilots/POCs, and two partnerships.

On Wednesday, the Topeka accelerator was officially announced as the first tenant for the in-the-works Link Innovation Labs incubator space at 220 SE 6th St., along the north end of the capital city’s innovation corridor.

RELATED: Topeka’s new community-built innovation incubator turns soil; leaders eager to show the world what grows

Stephanie Moran, senior vice president for innovation at Go Topeka and interim CEO of the Greater Topeka Partnership, opens the Plug and Play Topeka Expo Day at Townsite Tower in Topeka; photo by Tommy Felts, Startland News

Growing needs become opportunities

Event activity for Plug and Play Topeka companies actually began the day before the expo, noted Stephanie Moran, senior vice president of innovation for Go Topeka and interim CEO of Greater Topeka Partnership.

The accelerator facilitated informal, in-person conversations between the startups and resource partners about what the startups needed, she said, adding that just one of those connections could change the trajectory for a startup and truly move them forward.

“Having all of these regional resource partners — the universities AdAstra Bio, (KC) Animal Health Corridor, Network Kansas, Department of Commerce, everybody statewide — working together to develop this network really helps provide that support system for these entrepreneurs,” she explained Thursday during a regional innovation panel at the expo day.

Nick Love, co-founder of Kansas City-based Love Lifesciences, center, discusses Midwest investments during a Plug and Play Topeka panel alongside Bret Lanz, Kansas State University Technology Development Institute, and Romaine Redman, Kansas Department of Commerce; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

The conversation featured Redman; Bret Lanz, commercialization manager for Kansas State University Technology Development Institute; and Nick Love, co-founder of Kansas City-based Love Lifesciences.

“That’s one of the advantages of the Midwest,” said Lebahn, who moderated the panel. “We take our collaborative approach for granted sometimes, but some of our Plug and Play startups have noticed it. That collaboration doesn’t happen everywhere, and it feels different here.”

The willingness to work together that runs throughout the Midwest is incredible, echoed Love, whose medical injection device company was one of Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2024. 

“You can’t find people like this anywhere else,” he continued, noting Love Lifescience has received 100 percent of its financial support from within Kansas. “Even investors that have said no to investing in Love Lifesciences have given us incredibly critical feedback that’s helped to get us down the correct path. There are other places where we go and talk to investors, and they don’t give you that feedback. They don’t give you that support, the contacts, and connections that they have.”

“The people here are really one of the largest assets that we could have possibly asked for,” Love said.

Check out a photo gallery from the Plug and Play Topeka Expo Day, then keep reading.

Innovation from campus

Collaboration from within and between the regions’ universities — K-State, the University of Kansas, Wichita State, and Washburn University — also breaks from the norm, added Lebahn.

“Everybody has a unique lane and a unique perspective and can bring all of those resources together,” she explained. “So it’s not just agtech and animal health. We’ve got medical. We’ve got pharma. We’ve got business law, entrepreneurial support and nursing technology through Washburn. Wichita has an amazing aviation program.”

“We have so many areas of technology that we can focus on throughout the state,” Lebahn continued. “And we all work together to support each other.”

Bret Lanz, commercialization manager for Kansas State University Technology Development Institute, center, highlights his university’s commitment to collaboration through the Plug and Play Topeka accelerator; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News

Lanz — with K-State — works across campus to help startups not only evaluate opportunities, but figure out what it’s going to take to get those products developed and move forward as quickly as possible, he said. 

It can require tapping into university expertise, technology, and equipment, Lanz acknowledged. 

One Plug and Play Topeka startup helped by K-State — Seismi, an animal health monitoring company — pivoted from cats and dogs to livestock after talking to veterinary medical professionals. Now, Lanz noted, the startup has received a USDA Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 grant and just applied for a $2 million Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service grant.

“Their funding opportunities — by making that shift — took off overnight,” he continued, “and they’ve been going gung-ho since then.”

Yale Zhang, founder and CEO of Seismi, described the power of communication and connections.

“All of that came about because we had a conversation with Stephanie (Moran), who told us to talk to Bret (Lanz), who told us to talk to Nate (Kapaldo), who told us to work on cows,” Zhang said during a video about the K-State partnership. “Now we are a livestock products company, and that’s just the beginning.”

Cheers to success

Although he hails from Birmingham, Alabama, entrepreneur John Brown found early Midwest connections to be some of the most critical to his now-exited startup, he said. StenCo, his 2019-founded company that provides sustainable packaging solutions, was an alumni of Plug and Play Topeka’s first animal health cohort in 2022.

John Brown, co-founder of StenCo, discusses Plug and Play Topeka’s role in his startup’s recent exit; photo by Tommy Felts, Startland News

During Thursday’s event, Brown — who has mentored some of the current cohorts’ members — announced that StenCo recently was acquired by Phoenix-based Terram. Terms of the deal were not disclosed during his remarks, though Brown teased exit insights from the Kansas stage

“You actually thought so much of me, you painted something at the Capitol,” he joked, referencing the name he shares with the famed Kansas abolitionist whose visage hangs in the nearby Capitol rotunda.

“A lot of the genesis of where we got to actually started right here in the capital city,” he said, turning to a more serious note. “Whether it was with Lindsay Lahban out of Plug and Play or whether it was Stephanie Moran with Go Topeka, it started more or less by forming those relationships. They have been just huge advocates for us, making introductions, literally endorsing us in every possible way and supporting us long term.”

Now that he’s exited, Brown said, he doesn’t have another startup venture in him, but he plans to start a family office to invest in and mentor founders with whom he identifies, including in Topeka and the Midwest.

“With the Plug and Play team and with the City of Topeka, I hope to continue to participate as much as I can in saying thank you for getting us where we got to,” he continued.

“The recurring theme from all of this is you have to have a village around you that supports and nurtures you,” he added.