Kansas City Entrepreneurs: Here’s Your Chance to Bring Creative Startup Ideas to Life

If the last two years have shown us anything, it’s the need for us to tap into our creativity to develop new ideas and effective solutions.  

With a focus on helping our community bounce back even stronger after the pandemic, KC Digital Drive will host a virtual workshop on Thursday, Jan. 27, aimed at advancing promising start-up business ideas that surfaced over the past year. Administered by KC Digital Drive and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Innovation Center, the Comeback KC Ventures program addresses local needs that have surfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Business Canvas Workshop is an open call to Kansas City’s entrepreneurs, ideators, doers, dreamers, and entrepreneurship-minded college students to join in this fast-track collaborative session. Attendees will team up with others around worthy new business opportunities – examples of which are listed below – to help accelerate the projects’ development and deployment in Kansas City. 

Throughout the past decade, Kansas City has earned the reputation as one of the most entrepreneurial cities in the nation. Funded through a SPRINT grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, Comeback KC Ventures aims to apply that entrepreneurial spirit to solving problems brought into focus during the pandemic. 

In 2021, participants at four workshops hosted by KC Digital Drive and the UMKC Innovation Center identified more than 20 early-stage business opportunities that could address community needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those business opportunities will be explored further at the Jan. 27 Business Canvas Workshop with the goal of fueling teams toward development and deployment in the region. 

Additionally, Comeback KC Ventures includes a fellowship program. Currently, KC Digital Drive and the UMKC Innovation Center are supporting eight Fellows and their teams, providing them access to experts on the frontline teams of the region’s COVID response. With full support from KC Digital Drive and the UMKC Tech Venture Studio’s entrepreneurial resources and support programs, these innovators, new businesses, and startups can get what they need to succeed. Fellowship applications are open and accepted on a rolling basis.

What: 

Business Canvas Workshop – highlighting emerging projects that have come out of the year-long Comeback KC Ventures program hosted by KC Digital Drive, and the UMKC Innovation Center. Attendees will explore a number of curated briefs, and are welcome to bring their own ideas to the event, noting that the program is seeking innovations that connect in some way to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and have a direct impact in/on the Kansas City region. 

Examples of business briefs include: 

● Food Desert Grocery Delivery – An offering that provides regular grocery deliveries to residents of geo-targeted neighborhoods. 

● NFTs for Research Papers and other IP – Leverage NFTs to identify ownership and provenance of academic and medical research. 

● Family Volunteering Platform – Create a system to match volunteers (individuals and groups) with organizations who can use their time and talents. 

● Community Canvassing – Create a system to facilitate community canvassing for research, outreach, education, and persuasion.

Where: VIRTUAL EVENT (Link provided at registration). 

When: 9:30-11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022 

Register here (https://tinyurl.com/kcddjan27) 

For more information, contact the team at [email protected]