Students visit to KCSV is “start of a major story yet to be written”

As the momentum of Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to grow and success stories are built, the sustainability of a thriving Silicon Prairie will depend on the quantity and quality of the talent pipeline feeding startups. Developing relationships between the local startup scene and the next generation of talent is a critical piece to our…

About the author: Regan Carrizales is the Silicon Prairie News community builder in Kansas City.


The Blue Valley CAPS program tours the Kansas City Startup Village on Friday.

As the momentum of Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to grow and success stories are built, the sustainability of a thriving Silicon Prairie will depend on the quantity and quality of the talent pipeline feeding startups. Developing relationships between the local startup scene and the next generation of talent is a critical piece to our future. A student group tour of Kansas City Startup Village last week opened the door to a new awareness.

Sixty students from Blue Valley’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) toured KCSV on Friday to meet local startups and get an insider perspective on three of them. Blue Valley CAPS, a program focused on bioscience, engineering, business and technology and human services, is an example of how industry and education are connecting to prepare high school juniors and seniors for work. Silicon Prairie News organized the tour after the CAPS program inquired about the entrepreneurial activity in the Kansas City area.

“That’s startup village?” The students said on arrival. “That’s startup village!” They said after a high-speed, high-energy tour featuring viable companies.

“We see this trip down to KCSV as the start of a major story yet to be written,” CAPS accelerator manager Scott Kreshel said.

Discussions varied between technical and philosophical – from research and development explained by EyeVerify (right) to the emotional risk and reward of being involved in a startup shared by Local Ruckus.

Mike Farmer, co-founder of Leap2, told the students to “capture their thoughts and write them down.”

Call to action for Kansas City: keep working to build an entrepreneurial community that allows these young, talented, future defining individuals to build their ideas into companies, here at home, on the Silicon Prairie.

 

Credits: Photos by Regan Carrizales.


About the author: Regan Carrizales, the Silicon Prairie News community builder in Kansas City, comes to the company with a unique background in the non-profit and local government sectors. Carrizales believes in the critical role that “community” plays – it is how progress is made – and is most passionate about supporting the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Find Carrizales on Twitter, @regslc.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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