Name: Adam N. England
Title/Occupation: CTO, Hoopla.io
Age: 31
Hometown: Mexico, Missouri
Current city: Kansas City
Twitter: adamnengland
Personal
Title of my autobiography: “If I Ran the Earth”
Thing I can’t live without: My cast iron skillet. My wife expects a hot dinner on the table every night.
Drink of choice: Sweet tea, at least 1 liter per day
Last book I read: “Resurrection Day” by Brendan DuBois. It’s an alternate history novel about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Ultimate road trip snack: Sour Worms
Celebrity doppelgänger: Keanu Reeves
Guilty pleasure band and/or film: Beavis and Butthead Do America
Chosen career in an alternate reality: An actuary. I really enjoy statistics and data models.
Worst OCD tendency: Checking my database repeatedly for missing indices.
Quote I might have said: “It upsets me that so many folks are making Harlem Shake videos.”
Which actor or actress, and why: Michael Dorn. He appeared in 281 Star Trek episodes as Worf, and I loved them all.
Favorite YouTube video: None, really, I always prefer text to video.
Entrance song if I was a wrestler: “Cantina Band” from Star Wars
Thanks to our sponsor
Local
Best place in Kansas City no one knows about: The Opera House in the River Market. One stop has coffee, food, sweets and cocktails.
Kansas City’s obligatory tourist stop: Oklahoma Joe’s
One thing Kansas City has that other Silicon Prairie cities don’t: Google Fiber in my home and my office.
Best thing going for Kansas City’s startup community: A surprisingly large number of accelerators/incubators, including the new Sprint/Techstars mobile health accelerator.
Last local restaurant I ate at: Pierpont’s at Union Station
Best meal I’ve had in Kansas City: Tapas and sangria at La Bodega on Southwest Boulevard
Kansas City would be better if… we figured out how to churn out a larger number of mobile and hardware developers to help drive tech innovation.
The Startup Scene
Social media pet peeve: Retweets of celebrities
App I’m obsessed with: Bump. However, I almost never find anyone else who has the app.
Silicon Prairie startup crush: Trellie. Such an excellent idea, it makes me wish I carried a purse.
Most comfortable startup T-shirt I own: Not really a startup, but my NodeCamp shirt wins.
Something most people don’t know about me: I was entered in the 2003 NBA Draft, retained an agent and am no longer eligible to participate in amateur athletics.
Entrepreneur I most want to grab a drink with: Peter Thiel
I do what I do because… I feel a lot of satisfaction when I can help other creative-minded folks turn an idea into a real working product. Whether it is discussing an idea over tea, or developing a mobile app, I enjoy bridging the gap between dreams and the software.
Before I was in startups… I spent a couple years coding at established businesses, mostly keeping my mouth shut and meeting developers who I should emulate.
If money wasn’t an object, my next company would be… Probably a 3D-printing technology, focused on use by children. I can’t help but think that a child’s creativity is enhanced by the ability to design out any object they need and see it come to life.
The Silicon Prairie startup scene is missing… A university with a top-tier computer science program.
In five years, I’ll… be focusing more of my time on helping younger developers get involved in startups and technology innovation. I wish I’d known how fun this job was when I was 20 years old.
In five years, the Silicon Prairie… will be a lot bigger. As it becomes easier and easier for teams to work and collaborate remotely, I’d like to see startups popping up in every little town between Kansas City, Omaha and Des Moines, and not just in the cities.
Credits: Photo courtesy England. Video from YouTube.
