Introducing organizational structure to its organic success, Kansas City Startup Village has established its first formal committee to represent the community of high-tech startups located around 44th Street and State Line Road in Kansas City, Kan.
The energetic group of about 25 small companies operating in 15 residential properties was serendipitously founded in late 2012, when three lean startups moved into the neighborhood to get Google Fiber’s ultra-high-speed internet service.
“We’ve been very organic in nature, and we want to keep that organic nature,” said Startup Village co-leader Brittain Kovac, a member of the new committee and an employee of search-engine startup Leap.it (previously Leap2). “But we want to also have a bit more structure, because we are becoming more mature now. We understand a little bit of how this is being run and what needs to be done to make it successful.
“In the beginning, it was coming at us so fast that we just had to make decisions on the fly,” Kovac said. “None of it was expected. We ran with it. We believe the next phase in our success is to have this committee.”
Voting for self-nominated committee candidates closed March 30, and was open to the 80 to 100 individuals who live or work in the Village and to 175 to 200 active supporters. The six Village members and three supporters elected to the new committee are:
- Adam Arredondo, co-founder Local Ruckus & Hoopla.io, KCSV co-leader
- Matthew Marcus, co-founder Local Ruckus & Hoopla.io, KCSV co-leader
- Brittain Kovac, marketer, Leap.it, KCSV co-leader
- Tyler Van Winkle, product manager, Leap.it
- Anurag Patel, director of operations, Sportsphotos.com
- Mark Chai and Kyle Ginavan (one seat), co-founders NexusHQ
- Nathan Kurtz, manager of entrepreneurship, Kauffman Foundation
- Melissa Roberts, community organizer, 1 Million Cups
- Aaron Deacon, managing director, KC Digital Drive
The committee’s dual mission is to continue to grow the Village as a “self-sustaining community,” while contributing to the overall success of the Kansas City area, Kovac said. “We probably need to bring on 10 to 15 more properties,” she said, “which would equate to maybe 15 or 20 more companies.”
The growth plan includes establishing a separate co-working/communal space for Villagers
and their guests, Kovac said, because “right now, if we have any type of a large meeting, we actually kind of invade the office space of another company because they have the largest conference table in the Village.”
A major decision of the committee will be whether the Village will seek nonprofit status, which is “looking very likely,” Kovac said. “We did meet with a nonprofit specialist last week to kind of get our heads around what exactly would be needed and what type of a nonprofit we would need to be, which most likely would be a 501(c)3.”
If that came to pass, the nonprofit’s board of directors would not necessarily be the same people who are currently serving on the Village’s first formal committee.
“The board would be a board specifically for the nonprofit …” Kovac said. “We’re talking about bringing on advisors and board members that would be from the Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., governments, and from the Kauffman Foundation and other leading organizations throughout the city that we believe have the expertise and resources that they could lend us to help us grow.”
There is a conceivable future in which a Village advisory committee could coexist with a Village board of directors, Kovac said.
“As the Village continues to grow, we do hope that more people will want to be a part of it in one way or another,” she said. “We hope that we can allow for other people to come on board, that’s for sure.”
