Prairie Portraits is a weekly set of questions intended to help the community get to know someone from the Silicon Prairie startup scene a little bit better. Prairie Portraits feature a fixed set of questions ranging from career background and personal perferences to, perhaps, off-the-wall questions on YouTube videos and entrance music.
Name: Tim Banks
Title/Occupation: Director of Engineering at Red Nova Labs
Age: 29
Hometown: Blue Springs, Missouri
Current city: Kansas City, Missouri
Twitter: @the_bank
Personal
Title of my autobiography: “If this, then that”
Thing I can’t live without: Running shoes. I believe in strong work/life balance and getting out for a long run allows me to take my mind off everything.
Drink of choice: Has to be tea. Earl Grey is my flavor of choice.
Last book I read: “Ghost in the Wires.” A great autobiography by Kevin Mitnik, one of the first hackers that was pursued by the FBI back in the ’80s.
Ultimate road trip snack: Teryaki beef jerky
Entrance song if I was a wrestler: “Intro” by The XX
Celebrity doppelgänger: Moot from 4Chan
Guilty pleasure band and/or film: DragonForce
Chosen career in an alternate reality: Astronaut. Space has always fascinated me. Being able to see the Earth from a perspective that only a few people experience would be amazing.
Worst OCD tendency: I never set my alarm on numbers that are multiples of five or 10. If I want to wake up at 7 a.m., I would set the alarm for a few minutes before or after.
Quote I might have said: “What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan”…I definitely didn’t say that. Jason Fried did.
Which actor or actress, and why: Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything he is in is just so good. Hopefully he will get his Best Actor award one of these days.
Favorite YouTube video: Giorgio singing his order at Sonic.
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Local
Best place in Kansas City no one knows about: You Say Tomato—great little breakfast place near Martini Corner. Their chai tea latte is amazing.
Kansas City’s obligatory tourist stop: Liberty Memorial. It seems like there are about a million photos of the KC skyline from the hill.
One thing Kansas City has that other Silicon Prairie cities don’t: Google Fiber!
Best thing going for Kansas City’s startup community: The energy. Just go to any local event (1 Million Cups, Startup Weekend, etc.) and you can feel the excitement and energy.
Last local restaurant I ate at: Port Fonda in Westport. I always just go with the special and haven’t been disappointed. And the chips and salsa is some of the best you can get in KC.
Best meal I’ve had in Kansas City: A steak dinner at The Majestic.
Kansas City would be better if… our football and baseball teams could win a playoff game. It’s been 20 years since the Chiefs have won one, and almost 30 years since the Royals have gone to the playoffs. At least we have Sporting KC.
The Startup Scene
Social media pet peeve: The random, open-ended posts that don’t provide any value or context.
App I’m obsessed with: Alien Blue for Redditing.
Silicon Prairie startup crush: Dwolla
Most comfortable startup T-shirt I own: Probably not considered a startup anymore, but the Twilio shirt is so comfy.
Something most people don’t know about me: I love to move. I have moved over a dozen times in the last 10 years. However, I just bought a house so I think my annual moving days are coming to an end.
Entrepreneur I most want to grab a drink with: Jason Fried of 37signals. I got to see him speak back at the first Big Omaha and he was great. I have followed his blog and read his books and he has a unique perspective on running a business.
I do what I do because… it is so satisfying to take an idea and bring it to reality. I knew I wanted to be a developer before I was even in high school. One of my older brothers was taking a programming class and showed me some of his homework. I was fascinated at how he could control what the computer was doing. I was instantly hooked.
Before I was in startups… I’ve actually been in startups for almost 10 years. I worked with a KC-based startup while in college. After graduating from MU, I worked for a small company in Columbia, Mo. I then made my way back to KC and joined Red Nova Labs.
If money wasn’t an object, my next company would be… a triathlon-related business. Over the last decade, triathlons have grown in popularity and races are now selling out even faster. I would like bring more technology into the sport by updating the timing chips to give up to second GPS positioning. This would benefit both the company putting on the race (think safety) and the fans following the race.
The Silicon Prairie startup scene is missing… a startup competition. Austin has an annual Startup Games competition where companies compete against each other for bragging rights. If there are other companies in the area that are interested in participating, shoot me an email.
In five years, I’ll… still be living the dream here in the Silicon Prairie.
In five years, the Silicon Prairie… will cover a wider area. Most of the news you hear is from Des Moines, Omaha and Kansas City. I would like to see it branch out to more of the surrounding states.
Credits: Photos courtesy of Tim Banks.
