Unearthing Kansas City’s startup gems (with your help)

Last week, Startland News published its Top 10 startups and four honorable mentions to watch in 2016.

By and large, the piece has been well received with thousands of readers issuing kudos to startups that made the list. But as with any subjective “Top 10-whatever” list, we expected grumbles about the worthiness of the startups on the list versus others that were omitted.

What surprised me, however, was one reader’s comment expressing disappointment that local media neglects to cover many up-and-coming startups.

“It’s like nobody wants to do the hard work of finding the truly new and innovative companies out there,” the comment reads. “Hopefully one day I’ll see a list on a site like this that doesn’t already contain the exact same list all of us already knew about before the click-baity list title made us have hope.”

Two months ago and with no prior exposure to the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, I dove head-first into the Kansas City startup community pond as the new Startland News managing editor. I’m slowly learning to doggy paddle, but I’m not surprised there are startups I don’t know about.

Others on the Startland staff are more ingrained in the community — but they too aren’t surprised that some startups aren’t on their radars. And that’s why we’d love your help. We’re naturally curious, and we take pride and great joy in researching the local business community, but we aren’t omniscient.  

At Startland News, startups are at the core of what we cover. If anyone is going to do the hard work of finding new and innovative companies, it’s us. But we don’t know what we don’t know, and if we’re missing a startup because they don’t beat their drum as loudly as all the others, introduce us to them.

Give us your list of Kansas City’s top startups we should know (and write) about. And keep telling us as you hear of new ones. We’d love to tell their stories.