About the author: Eze Redwood is an ambassador for Kansas City Startup Village, one of the lead organizers for MECA Innovation Challenge and partner at Wings Cafe in Kansas City.
Kansas City Startup Village’s inaugural MECA Innovation Challenge tasked 30 high school and college students in the greater Kansas City area with creating innovative tech solutions for real startups. Students learned hands-on about a variety of diverse business models and skills needed to grow a startup, all while gaining the entrepreneurial problem-solving mentality.
During the three-day competition at the end of September, students grouped into teams of five to seven students. Each team was mentored by one of KC’s best and brightest tech-related entrepreneurs. Team mentors were Christian Fisher, Briefcase; Julian Builes, Netchemia; Zach Allen, Chosen Payments; Catalina Campos, Surmount Media; Timothy Gaull, AvidMobile; and Brennan Crawford, Green Up. Mentors were asked to follow four core guideposts: facilitation, encouragement, positivity and guidance.
Thanks to our sponsor
Throughout the competition, sessions included essential successful entrepreneurship topics such as networking strategies from KCSV entrepreneurs, digital marketing approaches from Emfluence CEO David Cacioppo and bootstrap marketing from Sara Davidson. Teams were given unique business challenges and after interviewing the CEOs and founders, worked together to create solutions. To translate their concepts into reality, students were provided a team of UI/UX and graphic designers lead by Alex Benson of LongRoadHome Productions.
The stakes were high as students competed for tickets to the USA vs. Jamaica FIFA World Cup Qualifier, Compute Midwest, KC Startup Weekend No. 8, Lean Startup Weekend and personal websites by Optima Worldwide. Students presented while mentors watched with pride. The main stage of the National World War I Museum provided the perfect backdrop for the presentations. All were extremely well done and insightful. Student dedication and solution quality warranted reward. All student participants were surprised with three hardbound books (Startup Communities by Brad Feld, ReWork by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries), professional business cards and Raspberry Pis.
While the official victors were Garrett Sadler, Graham Long, Jaspreet Singh, Matt Schmitz, Nancy Chapman, Samuel Stowers and Tarik Wilkes—the real winners were the businesses, which were brave enough to hand over their challenges.
For their solutions, Paleofit received an food barcode scanning app that determines how well users fulfill their Paleo goals, while creating a community of local Paleo and Crossfitters. Accountability goals are displayed to that community in a gamified format. Team HostelKC invented an urban exploration and hostel community building app to white-label. Trellie’s team reinvented the target demographic and use of the device by creating an app that allows users to assign different notifications for different types of callers, among other add-ons.
Team Prairie Goods created a digital marketing campaign while sectioning off the many ventures of well-known photographer Jason Domingues, and the Sportsphotos.com team fundamentally rebuilt the way the website engages and interacts with users in addition to innovating the business model.
Because of KCSV co-leader connections with Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC) and KCKCC Workforce Development, when grant money became available KCSV was approached to create a youth event. Financial support came through KCKCC and the regional KC Accelerator Project—funded by the Jobs & Innovation Accelerator Challenge grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration and the Small Business Administration. And so, MECA Challenge was born!
Kansas City Startup Village looks forward to bonding more students to mentors annually through this uniquely formatted innovation challenge competition.
Credits: Photo from LinkedIn.
