The GEW Startup House on Bell Street in the Kansas City Startup Village will host international visitors.
Jonathan Ortmans wants to import international ideas into Kansas City and hopes to see the city’s flavor makes it around the world. The president of Global Entrepreneurship Week recently bought a house in the Kansas City Startup Village to let international entrepreneurs absorb all the community’s happenings.
First up in the GEW Startup House will be the winner of Startup Open—a global competition consisting of 50 high-growth startups from 24 countries—to be named during Global Entrepreneurship Week Nov. 18-24 in Kansas City. The winning entrepreneur will receive three months free rent and introductions to leaders and events around the area, primarily through Psicurity founder Neil Anderson, who Ortmans has appointed as a sort of ambassador to the area. Anderson will live in the house and help visitors get a lay of the land.
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Ortmans (right) got the idea for the house—located on the Missouri side—after seeing Brad Feld purchase a house, which now is occupied by startup Handprint. He knew he wanted to get back to being involved in the startup community at a more intimate level and the opportunity in Kansas City was hard to beat. He also used to be a senior fellow for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, though this project is entirely his and its sole focus is connecting communities.
“I frankly wanted to move promptly on what I felt was a great example Brad Feld led in buying a startup house,” he said. “I was very impressed by the people I met. Ben [Barreth] made it so easy. It felt like an affordable way to get back in this arena. I always want to give back to Mr. K’s back yard when I can.”
Kansas City has a community that’s hard to find elsewhere, he said, and the price to get involved is unmatched. The opportunity to buy a house for around $100,000 that has Google Fiber in the midst of a dense startup community was impossible to pass up.
“The hope is to bring some different perspectives to the Startup Village and have entrepreneurs go back to communities, taking KCSV learnings with them,” he said.
In addition to the GEW winner, Ortmans said the international winner of Get in the Ring—Silicon Prairie startups Travefy and EyeVerify are in the running to get to the final round in the Netherlands—will be offered the same deal. After that, he plans to open the house to other competitions and possibly representatives of GEW’s 140 chapters around the world—the house has three rooms for him to consistently bring in new visitors. In many ways, the house will become an embassy of sorts to welcome entrepreneurs with the same passions and goals as those in KC.
“It’s a sharing of networks, a sharing of knowledge,” Ortmans said. “A building of friendships, a building of relationships. It’s more than a connection on LinkedIn. These are people to drink a beer with, barbecue with.”
Credits: GEW Startup House photo courtesy Ortmans. Jonathan Ortmans photo from LinkedIn.
