MindMixer adds Kansas City to growing fold with KC Momentum

MindMixer planning meetings probably don’t involve a map with big bull’s-eyes over the major hubs of the Silicon Prairie, but the Omaha-based startup, which creates and manages virtual town halls, continues to fuel its growth in part by keeping its home region in the crosshairs. Most recently, MindMixer began …

KC Momentum is the second citywide site of its kind that MindMixer has launched since April. Screenshot from kcmomentum.com.

MindMixer planning meetings probably don’t involve a map with big bull’s-eyes over the major hubs of the Silicon Prairie, but the Omaha-based startup, which creates and manages virtual town halls, continues to fuel its growth in part by keeping its home region in the crosshairs. 

Most recently, MindMixer began working with the city of Kansas City, Mo. on KC Momentum, a city-wide planning site similar to the Engage Omaha site that MindMixer helped launch in April. Following Omaha, Kansas City is the second city to work with MindMixer on a “perpetual” subscription model. That means the city purchases a yearlong subscription and all city departments have access to it, as opposed to MindMixer’s other model, which is used for finite projects.

MindMixer has worked in Kansas City in the past on smaller neighborhood planning efforts. Bowden said that history, coupled with an emphasis by mayor Sly James and city manager Troy Schulte on increasing citizen engagement this year, helped the company broker its most recent deal.

“Those went so well,” Bowden said of the previous MindMixer-supported planning efforts in Kansas City, “that the city manager’s office and the mayor’s office were interested in taking that platform citywide.”

MindMixer is also working with Joplin, Mo. on Joplin Town Hall, a site to help plan the rebuilding process after a May tornado devastated the southwest Missouri town. MindMixer has collaborated with Tuscaloosa, Ala. on a similar site, Tuscaloosa Forward, and Bowden said the response in that city has been remarkable: in a four-week period, the site drew almost 15,000 unique views, more than 1,000 registered users and upwards of 500 ideas. (Screenshot, below, from twitter.com/mind_mixer)

“The reason we’re having such traction in those kinds of situations is because is it’s a very short period of time that they’re kicking off major plans,” Bowden said. “A typical citywide plan could be a 1-2 year process. With a disaster recovery effort, it might be a 60- or 90-day window where you have to capitalize on people’s attention and awareness quickly and get them involved quickly so that the rebuilding process can start quickly.”

MindMixer hired two new employees on the sales and account management side in the last three weeks, bringing its full-time team to eight. That will help the company keep pace with growth across multiple verticals. In addition to its expanding base of client cities, MindMixer has seen an uptick in interest from legislators since launching Rep. Lee Terry’s site, Lee Listens, last month.

“Lee Terry’s site has propelled a significant amount of interest form other congressional offices,” Bowden said. “So it looks like we’ll actually be able to announce shortly some new endeavors in that marketplace, in that vertical. That’s been pretty exciting.”

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 »

Get the latest news and events from Nebraska’s entrepreneurship and innovation community delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.