*Guest blog post from Josh Rowland, Vice Chairman of Lead Bank
Is Kansas City on the launch pad? Are all systems “GO”? The systems are in place, mission control fully briefed, media poised to record the event. But what, on Launch Day, will actually happen?
LaunchKC has the potential to bring Kansas City’s startup ecosystem to a new level of productivity, energy and sustainability. Certainly, as the current batch of promising applicants to the contest demonstrates, start-up entrepreneurs themselves recognize the opportunity and want to be a part of it.
But focusing on LaunchKC as a springboard for start-ups alone misses the point of what the event should, indeed, must do. A critical mission of LaunchKC must be to activate the total support ecosystem of Kansas City – most notably, a multi-part investment community – that can provide long-term funding structures for start-ups to achieve sustainable success.
Kansas City’s track record on this point is not too good. A recent report by KCSourcelink called “Financing Early Stage Companies in the Kansas City Region” presents an unvarnished look at what’s really been happening on the ground for startups that challenges the touted ambitions and rhetoric of “America’s Most Entrepreneurial City.” The truth is that, notwithstanding well-publicized commitments to entrepreneurial education, the critical investor community in Kansas City has “fragmented.” According to the report: “the community remains sorely lacking in organized capital to power young businesses.”
The report makes a number of recommendations to correct this problem, but all of them depend on one element, the ingredient that LaunchKC hopes to add: the excitement and commitment of the Kansas City investment community to organize its resources and talents in support of local startups. The critical term here is “organized”; for this effort to achieve lasting results, the sources of capital at each stage should act as partners, each fulfilling its mission, but effectively handing off the company to the next investor as the company’s growth requires.
LaunchKC will not be successful if, once again, we have provided a launch pad for companies to benefit from our civic goodwill and advice, only for them to fly off to the coasts for the capital they need to succeed. LaunchKC should instead be the platform from which the Kansas City investment community gets on board to bring our city to new heights of business energy, activity and success.
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What is LaunchKC?
LaunchKC is a national grants competition that will award up to ten $50,000 grants to early stage entrepreneurs and their tech ventures. Learn more