Gather the latest news about Groover Labs, Wichita Coworking, Startups, and Founders on our blog.
Groover Labs Visits Emporia Main Street
Last week, the Groover Labs team hit the road to meet with several rural partners interested in participating in the ACCEL-KS at Groover Labs grant program.
The Groover Labs team hit the road to meet with several rural partners interested in participating in the ACCEL-KS at Groover Labs grant program. As a reminder, Groover Labs was awarded a grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce to award proof-of-concept funding up to $25,000 to founders across the state with ideas primed for scale and commercialization.
Groover Labs Co-founder Tracy Hoover discussed the ACCEL-KS grant program with Emporia Main Street. Photo Courtesy of Jess Buchholz
On Tuesday, we visited Emporia Main Street, a nonprofit in Emporia, Kansas, that helps entrepreneurs launch businesses, supports existing businesses as they grow, and drives job creation in Lyon County. Executive Director Casey Woods and Fab Lab Manager Jeremy Wharton gave us a tour of their makerspace, which has a variety of 3D printers and a CNC mill. We discussed several ongoing projects and discussed how the grant program can support founders in the region.
After the tour, Groover Labs co-founder Tracy Hoover gave a presentation to the group, where she talked about ACCEL-KS at Groover Labs grant program, and outlining how we can collaborate with Emporia Main Street to identify entrepreneurs in Lyon County. Members of the press were on hand, including from the Emporia Gazette and local radio station KVOE.
We’ve included the article and radio news story below. To support local journalism, we’ve only included the first few paragraphs along with a link to the Gazette’s and KVOE’s websites, where you can read the the full stories.
Emporia Main Street partners with Groover Labs for rural innovation grants
By Amanda Davis amanda@emporia.com
Sep 9, 2025
A new avenue of rural-specific funding will soon be available to local entrepreneurs.
Emporia Main Street announced Tuesday afternoon that they will be partnering with Groover Labs, a Wichita-based community innovation nonprofit, to provide funding and support for innovators with tech-startup ideas in the local area.
Groover Labs, co-founded by Tracy Hoover and Curt Gridley, was awarded a $400,000 ACCEL-KS grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation. Groover Labs is seeking to give out at least 32 grants, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000, to strong prototypes, scalable ideas, or hardware and software development in Kansas.
Emporia Main Street is one of four rural partners with Groover Labs that is set to aid in distributing funds to rural innovators. Casey Woods, Emporia Main Street Director, said that partnership serves to fill gaps in resources for both Groover Labs and Emporia Main Street.
Emporia Main Street, local entrepreneurs and state maker spaces set to benefit from new ACCEL-KS grant funding being made available by Groover Labs of Wichita
Sep 9, 2025
A new grant program originating in Wichita is providing an opportunity for innovation for both local entrepreneurs and state maker spaces.
Tuesday, Emporia Main Street invited local media to a presentation by Groover Labs of Wichita detailing a new grant program that was made possible by a $400,000 allocation from the Kansas Department of Commerce as part of the KDOC Accelerating Concepts to Commercialization in Kansas (ACCEL-KS) proof-of-concept program. The ACCEL grants will be made available to entrepreneurs across the state, with a minimum of $5,000 to a maximum of $25,000 available.
Groover Co-Founder Tracy Hoover says the goal of the grant program is to help rural developers create or enhance scalable products.
Community and Collaborating: Time in the Hotseats
We believe that a community with a diverse skillset benefits everyone, and that’s why we offer the Hotseat Membership.
Spontaneous Collaboration
Spontaneous collaboration requires the right circumstances and environment to happen.
First, you need the thing—the idea, the job, the client; you need whatever it is that motivates you to take action. Then, you need a place that has the necessary tools for you to do the work. And that place should be full of people with skills and creativity, along with the dedication to see it through. And most importantly, you need the opportunity for all of these things to connect.
Groover Labs is where ideas, skills, creativity, resilience, and opportunity meet!
The Chance for Connection
This is why we have Hotseat Memberships.
The engineers and founders, further along in their journey, need different things than the freelancers, remote workers, or entrepreneurs who are just starting. Our hotseats create a professional environment at affordable prices, and give people a chance to get to know the Groover Labs Community.
We believe that a community with a diverse skillset benefits everyone.
It creates the opportunity for a software developer to connect with a founder who has a physical product but needs help building an app…
… for an entrepreneur to brainstorm with a marketer about how to improve their personal brand…
… for a graphic designer to pick up a client who needs a last-minute banner for a small business owner who is about to go to a conference and host a booth.
These opportunities are a key component to getting collaborative businesses off the ground!
Day in the Life
A day at Groover Labs in the hotseats usually begins with a specially made blend of coffee from Local Roasters. This brew was developed just for Groover Labs, so you won’t be able to get it anywhere else.
Then you choose your seat. You can sit at the long, library-style tables, or on the patio if the weather is good, or at a high-top chair at one of the counters. If you’re not ready to settle in at a desk, grab a comfortable chair in our library to enjoy your coffee and check emails. Connect to the Wi-Fi, and then you can begin your workday.
One of our favorite things to do is introduce members to each other, but we take careful notice not to interrupt someone who’s in the zone. Most of the time, conversations happen organically.
Showing up allows you the opportunity to engage and participate on your terms.
Some days you will want to connect with your peers to work through a problem.
Other days, someone else will want your expertise on a complex project they’ve been working on.
And, on most days, you’ll need to focus on your work.
Spontaneous collaboration comes from having the right components in place at the right time. See it for yourself!
What is a Hotseat?
Our hotseats are the easiest and most affordable membership level we offer on a month-to-month basis. But what are they? Hotseats are open-area workstations that are available to members and day pass users on a first-come, first-served basis. They don’t have permanent owners and cannot be formally reserved.
Our hotseats are the easiest and most affordable membership level we offer on a month-to-month basis. But what are they?
Hotseats are open-area workstations that are available to members and day pass users on a first-come, first-served basis. They don’t have permanent owners and cannot be formally reserved.
If you’re curious about a hotseat membership, you’re more than welcome to test them out. We offer Open Coworking Wednesdays when anyone can come in and work for the day. We hope you’ll enjoy the experience so much that you’ll join us as a member.
Here’s how our hotseats work:
You can sign up for membership by emailing us at contact@grooverlabs.org or telling the front desk community associate you’d like to join as a hotseat member.
Your hotseat membership is $75/mo, and it’s month-to-month.
It takes less than 10 minutes to complete your application, which consists of signing a Membership Agreement and Liability Waiver, entering payment information into your Groover Labs member portal, and connecting to our gigabit fiber network.
You’ll have access to the space Monday-Friday from 8a-5p.
Here are the perks of becoming a hotseat member:
You’ll have access to our stable and secure gigabit fiber network.
You can reserve all of our multimedia conference rooms and use our soundproof private call booths.
You get to hang out with some of our awesome hotseat members. They’re software developers, startup founders, marketing experts, financial advisors, game designers, and more. Plus, you’ll probably run into other Groover Labs members who are taking a break from their screens.
All of the seating in the hotseat area is first come, first served. And you’ll see plenty of power outlets on each table, so you’ll never have to worry about your laptop running out of power.
You can drink all the coffee you want. Local Roasters, a local artisan coffee provider, created a special Groover Labs blend for us. We keep the coffee fresh all day.
We have excellent downtown parking, and we always have a space for you (although we confess that sometimes we have big events in our event venue, and you have to park a bit farther away, but you’ll probably get leftover food from the event by some of the best caterers in town).
But what about noise?
Some of our hotseat members were concerned that, because they take lots of virtual calls or spend lots of time on the phone, a hotseat membership might not be the right fit.
We suggested they try out the space anyway, and they did. We now count several of them as hotseat members.
Remember, we’re a coworking space. From a certain point of view, we’re no different than any other office space. When your coworkers are on the phone, you tune them out. If you find their conversations distracting, you put on headphones.
If, on the other hand, you’re concerned that your voice may be the distraction, we say fear not!
Grab a private call booth. If they’re not available, reserve a conference room. If all the call booths and all the conference rooms are full, talk to a member of the staff. Groover Labs is huge, with more than 37,000 square feet of finished space. We’ll work something out.
And, trust us, you’re not as loud as you think. Your coworkers are so busy working they won’t hear you anyway. On the off chance that you are unusually loud, someone might give you a polite tap on the shoulder to remind you you’re in a shared workspace.
The hotseats are fun, but they’re even more fun with more people. So come on down. We’ll be here, and we’ll set you up as fast as we can so you can get to work.
We're Expanding Our Office Hours (Again and Again)
Jason Toevs and Brian Weins will join Foreman Law and NXTUS from 9 a.m. to noon on Friday, January 15, for Groover Labs office hours. We started these free, informal meetings last year to make it easier for founders and startups to find and meet with local organizations and seasoned entrepreneurs as part of our mission to help strengthen Wichita’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Jason Toevs and Brian Wiens will join Foreman Law and NXTUS from 9 a.m. to noon on Friday, January 15, for Groover Labs office hours. We started these free, informal meetings last year to make it easier for founders and startups to find and meet with local organizations and seasoned entrepreneurs as part of our mission to help strengthen Wichita’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Office hours take place on the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month.
Toevs is the CTO and Head of Product for Quicc. His focus is on bridging the gaps between ideas, the tech how-to and investor relationships. He has helped raise 1.3M+ in startup funding along with building and leading products with local and foreign teams, as well as no-code projects to customer revenue. If you need to turn your tech or app idea into revenue, he can give you the confidence and early steps to get going with honest feedback on roadblocks or blindspots.
Wiens is graphic designer and brand strategist. He has worked as a design leader for more than 10 years with experience working with national brands and with local mom and pop shops. Wiens is passionate about building brands and designs driven by story and data. He believes that when a brand captures your voice, the connection brings energy—and movement—that propels your business forward.
Representatives from NXTUS will be available to meet with founders and entrepreneurs to discuss business plans, resources available in the community, capacity and capital needs for early stage founders, and more. To schedule an appointment with NXTUS, click here.
The attorneys at Foreman law have years of experience working with startups in the region and on a daily basis advise startup companies at all life cycle stages concerning legal and practical considerations related to formation, operation, and liquidity events. To schedule a time during Foreman Law’s office hours, please email contact@grooverlabs.org at least 24 hours in advance of your appointment.
We are thrilled to see our office hours program continue to grow!