Time and again at the conclusion of Startup Weekend, teams express a similar sentiment regarding their uncertain futures: the biggest challenge, the say, will be maintaining momentum.
More than a fortnight removed from the fifth Startup Weekend Kansas City, some teams are undoubtedly staring that challenge squarely in the face.
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But, as if by cue, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has an antidote to any lulls in post-SWKC momentum. The Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation (which, it should be noted, counts Startup Weekend among its affiliate organizations) yesterday released a new video (above) by Mike Folden about Startup Weekend Kansas City.
In addition to producing the sort of warm-fuzzies that could help spur teams on, the video also shares a variety of insights on the significance of Startup Weekend Kansas City — to nascent entrepreneurs, the city and others.
Thom Ruhe, the vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, sheds light on his organization’s support of the event. “I think one of the things I really love about Startup Weekend and why the Kauffman Foundation is backing it the way we are is they come into the local community, where true economic development, true support of entrepreneurship, is happening,” Ruhe said. “From community to community across the country, they’re catalyzing that energy to start new companies.”
Joni Cobb, the president and CEO of Pipeline and a SWKC judge, chimes in on the significance of the event to the growth of Kansas City as an entrepreneurial hotbed — a subject that’s come into focus recently with the Big 5. “Startup Weekend is really, really important and critical for Kansas City to not only become an entrepreneurial city,” Cobb says, “but to remain an entrepreneurial city for the future.”
One of the most telling accounts comes from a wide-eyed Kajari Ghosh, a student at Grinnell College who traveled to Kansas City for the event and saw an idea she pitched become the basis for the OutOfTheTrash team. “People liked my idea,” Ghosh says. “That was really shocking and pleasantly surprising but still pretty shocking. And it went really quickly from there.”
For more from Startup Weekend Kansas City, see our coverage of the event:
- Photos and projects from Day 2 of Startup Weekend Kansas City
- With programming games for kids, TutHopper tops Startup Weekend KC
