• The first 1 Million Cups in April 2012 signaled a decade of Kauffman Foundation-led ecosystem building, not just in Kansas City, but across the nation.
• The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s ARIE report rated KC a top 20 region for per capita high-earning entrepreneurs.
• Kansas City’s challenge today is converting that civic muscle into more breakout companies, which can translate to better overall economic mobility.
One morning in April 2012, a dozen Kansas City business types gathered at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The regular meetup was named 1 Million Cups and over the next decade close to 150 regions hosted the series.
Meanwhile, Kansas City organizers continued piecing together entrepreneurs with customers, services and ideas.
The 1MC stage is part of a constellation of pro-entrepreneurship programs, resources and organizations founded in Kansas City, many of which had Kauffman Foundation backing.
The region is now one of the country’s best at supporting fast-growth entrepreneurs, per the ARIE report.
For two decades, Kauffman helped define modern “entrepreneurial ecosystem building.” The foundation did it by funding research, exporting programs like 1MC, creating SourceLink, and convening a national field of practice. It became a major backer of Startland News, a good representation of the “storytelling” strategy that Kauffman’s oft-cited entrepreneurial ecosystem building playbook championed.
Then changing leadership and priorities at the Kauffman Foundation shifted toward its hometown, away from ecosystem-building across the US and toward economic mobility in Kansas City. It leaves behind a legacy.
A report published by the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center featuring analysis by Heartland Forward argues the region is now one of the country’s best at supporting fast-growth entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship as a vehicle for economic mobility?
Call the Kauffman Foundation the primary investor, but other big investments have been directed toward boosting entrepreneurship in Kansas City.
Google Fiber’s 2011 announcement made the metro region a national gigabit testbed and helped catalyze the KC Startup Village era. Google announced last year even faster internet speeds.
More recently, a cross-state coalition led by BioNexus KC landed a federal Tech Hubs designation for biosecure manufacturing, giving biomanufacturing founders a fresh sandbox.
The University of Missouri Kansas City, via its innovation center led by SourceLink founder Maria Meyers, is another of the region’s institutions that contribute to centering entrepreneurship.
As higher entrepreneurship rates reduce poverty and boost economic outcomes for all residents, it’s a tool for economic mobility, just what the Kauffman Foundation has turned its attention to. Last fall, influential Harvard research showed that the chance that a Kansas City resident will outearn her parents has stayed roughly the same over the last generation. That’s better than most other big regions, but certainly not inspiring.
The takeaway is simple. The same muscle that turned a weekly 2012 coffee into a national ritual can power a more visible, faster startup flywheel today, which should benefit more residents — though it will require patient capital that can focus on big goals for a long enough period.
To turn strengths into speed, the Nasdaq ARIE report suggests, leaders can stand up enterprise pilot pipelines, overweight pre-seed and translational funding tied to KC BioHub and the Animal Health Corridor, and keep founders leading the narrative via KCSourceLink and Startland News.
Back to the coffee: If a modest gathering in a foundation office in a mid-sized city can help spark an entrepreneurial renaissance a decade later, others can follow the example.
Kansas City proves the link between ecosystem craft and economic mobility, it will be because civic muscle keeps opening doors, and founders keep walking through them. That first 1 Million Cups gathering is part of that lineage.
