A national contest brought Alexa Nguyen, co-founder of 3D printing software startup Handprint, to Kansas City.

The 23-year-old and her company’s three other young co-founders met in Boston. Last spring, they won a contest to live and work rent-free for a year in the Village’s Fiberhouse, owned by startup-friendly Colorado-based investor Brad Feld.

Handprint is developing software that will allow consumers equipped with increasingly affordable 3D printers to make their own goods, including toys, tools, water bottles, phone cases and even customizable guitar hangers.

“We’re really thinking of these 3D printables as products, rather than just novelty items,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen is one of the few female entrepreneurs in the Village.

“Without female energy around, it would just be a lot of very brash and blunt sharing, rather than a communication of sorts,” she said. “We have a lot of conversations where I’m like, ‘Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have done that’ or ‘Next time, this could go a different way.’ Or I’ll make eye contact, and they’ll be like, ‘OK, we get it.’ ”

“These boys are risk-takers. They’re not scared to show their opinions. There’s a positive to it, too.”