Gather the latest news about Groover Labs, Wichita Coworking, Startups, and Founders on our blog.
Haven't popped by yet? Schedule a tour on our website
We give tours at Groover Labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4 p.m. and Wednesdays at noon. Use our coworking community calendar on our tours page to sign up to see Groover Labs.
If you haven’t visited Groover Labs yet, now you have no excuses.
We went live this week with a tour signup page on our website.
We give tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4 p.m. and Wednesdays at noon. Sign up for a tour using the calendar on our tour page. If those times don’t fit your schedule, email us at contact@grooverlabs.org, and we’ll make special arrangements.
Appointment Launch lifts off in Wichita
When people are sick, one of the last things they want to do is fill out yet another clipboard at the doctor’s office. Appointment Launch is looking to solve that problem and give health care providers more time with their patients.
When people are sick, one of the last things they want to do is fill out yet another clipboard of paperwork at the doctor’s office.
Appointment Launch, a Wichita company that was an early adopter at Groover Labs, is looking to help solve that problem and ultimately, give health care providers more time with their patients. The company’s web-based app — about two years in the making from concept to reality — launched this past week.
“We are an appointment workflow software solution for patients and health care providers,” explained co-founder Chad Cox. “Right now, the time that a provider gets to spend with a patient has been getting smaller and smaller. We want to extend how much time they have with their provider by giving patients the opportunity to provide information before an appointment.”
One of the inspirations for Appointment Launch was the uphill battle his father experienced while in treatment for cancer. Paperwork was never-ending, Cox said. His father died about a year-and-a-half ago. Cox and his brother, an optometrist, started Appointment Launch together.
“The place where I get my haircut has better technology than a lot of health care providers,” Cox said. “My dad went to MD Anderson in Houston. There was an iPad check-in system, which was great. But it all stayed right there. Even sometimes when he went to another provider in the same building, he’d have to fill out new paperwork.”
Appointment Launch “starts with an appointment reminder. From there, the patient can click on a link and start to work on paperwork as well as give pertinent information about their appointment and really anything their provider would like to know about their health,” Cox said.
The idea is to make that information available well before an appointment so the patient — and her or his physician — doesn’t spend as much face-to-face time dealing with paperwork.
“We integrate directly into the back office system,” Cox said. “A lot of this information will flow straight into their chart. We store this information for the patient so the patient can use the information for other providers.”
Appointment Launch allows patients to input health and family history, known allergies, medications, insurance information and emergency contacts. Patients can update information when necessary.
The software keeps track of all providers, and a family can have one account for all members.
Appointment Launch, where a third employee works as a developer, went live last week when it loaded about 17,000 appointments for about 6,000 patients.
“We have real-live patients on the system this week,” Cox said Friday. “That was at my brother’s office. He’s kind of our guinea pig. Another client will go live on March 6.”
Providers also will be able to use Appointment Launch to send patients information about health problems.
“It’s basically a patient portal on steroids,” Cox said.
Don't forget: Rise of the Rest applications are due Feb. 24
The deadline to apply for Rise of the Rest with Steve Case is Feb. 24. The tour will stop in Wichita in April, and up for grabs is $100,000.
Rise of the Rest with Steve Case will visit Wichita in April.
Startups can pitch for $100,000. The deadline to apply is midnight Feb. 24.
Apply by 2/24: www.revolution.com/apply
FAQ: https://www.revolution.com/rise-rest-100k-pitch-competition-faq/
Press Release: https://www.revolution.com/press-release/revolutions-rise-of-the-rest-road-trip-wichita-tulsa-oklahom-arkansas-st-louis-agtech/
What types of startups should apply to pitch?
All innovative startups are encouraged to apply. Applicants are not limited to a single sector or industry. Eligible startups have a product/service that’s live or in beta form and has measurable performance indicators such as revenue, customers, successful beta results, etc. We encourage pre-seed, seed stage, and series A stage companies to apply. In certain instances, “pre-revenue” companies may be selected to pitch if the company is building an advanced technology solution.
About Revolution’s Rise of the Rest
Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Funds are investment funds that are part of a nationwide platform led by Steve Case focused on spotlighting regional startup hubs and investing in early stage, high growth companies across the country. The team executes a strategy of partnering with regional ecosystem leaders and co-investors to build and scale the next wave of transformational companies. The Rise of the Rest Seed Funds are backed by a group of iconic entrepreneurs and business leaders who believe that the next great startups are located outside of coastal tech hubs. The Rise of the Rest Seed Funds are headquartered in Washington, D.C., and part of Revolution’s family of funds including Revolution Growth and Revolution Ventures. Visit Rise of the Rest online at revolution.com/rotr or @RiseOfRest.
Member Minute with Dave Cunningham of Flint Hills Group
One of our first members, Dave Cunningham, founded Flint Hills Group in 2016. The company builds custom software solutions to help scale businesses.
Although a lot of startups are created by people right out of college, Dave Cunningham founded Flint Hills Group after decades of working for other companies.
About half of the group is in Wichita, and the rest are scattered across the country. Cunningham works out of an office at Groover Labs and was one of our first members.
He and a crew of about 40 developers who work remotely write custom software solutions that help scale businesses.
“There’s a lot of companies out there that can’t find off-the-shelf solutions,” Cunningham said.
One of them is McAlister Oil, a Wellington company that approached Flint Hills about a solution for its work refueling train cars.
A tool McAlister — and its competitors — used to monitor refueling “was built on top of a really old operating system, Windows CE, and was dependent on 3G,” Cunningham said. The tool — called PeopleNet — “was at the end of its life, and the company that built it was not going to support it anymore.”
McAlister turned to Flint Hills for help. You can read more about the work Cunningham and his colleagues did in a Wichita Business Journal story.
“The competition is now coming to McAlister asking them to sell it,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham enjoys working with remote teams and was accustomed to doing so at his job at NetApp.
Groover Labs, he said, is “creating a community where people can collaborate. A rising tide lifts all boats.”
When he met co-founder Curt Gridley, “I saw that he was absolutely sincere about wanting to help the community and grow something. I think what fuels us is very, very similar.”
His advice for startups is to learn from others’ experiences growing a business.
“I think the most important thing you can do is find a trusted, knowledgeable mentor,” Cunningham said. “It makes things go so much faster, and you make fewer mistakes.”
Wichita's Quicc to pitch next month at South by Southwest
We sat down with Jason Toevs, the co-founder of Quicc, a Wichita company selected to pitch at South by Southwest. Read what Toevs has to say about what goes into a good pitch.
Jason Toevs has pitched a time or two as an entrepreneur.
The co-founder and CTO of Quicc, a Wichita-based company that helps content creators transcribe and burn captions on video, is headed to South by Southwest next month to pitch with business partner Mike Mathia.
“We were selected as one of the top five finalists in entertainment and content,” Toevs said during an interview at Groover Labs. “There were 900 applications from around the world.”
He and Mathia, co-founder and CEO, are looking forward to the challenge.
“I love to be challenged,” Toevs said. “One of the hardest things in this ecosystem is that there aren’t a lot of challengers. I think there are plenty of naysayers who like to pile on and say ‘I don’t think that will work.’ Some of the best entrepreneurs use it as fuel when people say ‘I don’t really see it, I don’t get it.’ ”
Quicc began in May 2019, a pivot from an earlier company, Alyss Analytics, that Toevs said was “too early to market.” Quicc has 2,500 users in 84 countries, all believers in the time the company can shave off of post-production.
Wichita’s startup community is encouraging at the moment, he said.
“I think there is an incredible amount of momentum at the moment,” Toevs said, mentioning Groover Labs as an important player.
“Places like Groover Labs are a great fit. Now there’s a place you can go and connect and build with other people — and not just software,” he said.
Toevs and Mathia will pitch Quicc to a room full of investors and SXSW attendees.
The process is involved — SXSW assigned Quicc a pitch coach who will help the team review and refine its presentation. The pitch itself will be three minutes with six minutes for questions and answers.
“I’ve pitched quite a few times — mostly to rooms of investors. It’s fun because Mike and I go back and forth on what’s the best to present this vision. It’s really awesome and fun to have a co-founder who complements and doesn’t replace parts of your capabilities,” he said.
Toevs served as a judge for Startup Grind Wichita’s Pitch Battle in December at Groover Labs.
Being authentic is crucial to a good pitch, he said — “really speaking the truth that you’re living every day. For founders, it’s really easy when you see and believe in the vision so clearly.”
His advice to other startups?
“Let the authenticity flow. You know your product. You know your vision. You know your customers. I think it’s a real gut check if pitching is hard because then you don’t know.”
He encourages entrepreneurs to consider “what part of this felt hard to deliver on, and how do I go deeper?”
Practicing your pitch to perfect it is crucial, Toevs said.
“Practice it with all sorts of different people. That will give you so much more confidence. It’s the unknown questions that blindside you that really put you on your toes,” he said.
Deadline coming soon for NXTSTAGE pilot competition
The deadline for startups to apply for the NXTSTAGE pilot competition is Feb. 15. The competition is sponsored by NXTUS and supported by the Wichita Community Foundation.
The deadline for startups to apply for the NXTSTAGE pilot competition is Feb. 15.
The competition, sponsored by NXTUS in Wichita and funded with a $250,000 grant from the Talent Ecosystem Fund at the Wichita Community Foundation, will focus on three core areas — banking and financial services, advanced manufacturing and industrial IoT (Internet of Things) and community health and vibrancy.
The goal of the competition is to help startups that have gotten off the ground reach the next stage of growth. Companies selected to participate will receive paid trips to Wichita and have the opportunity to meet with decision-makers and potential customers face-to-face, a news release from NXTUS, formerly e2e Accelator, explained.
The competition is open to startups across the world that have deployment-ready technologies and innovations that could add value to businesses and communities in the three focus areas.
Applications and more information is available online.
Thank you, Wichita, for a great grand opening
Did you miss our grand opening? No worries. We’d love for you to stop by our 42,000-square-foot coworking and makerspace in downtown Wichita for a tour. We’re ready to fuel collaboration and product development.
Our Jan. 25 grand opening was a celebratory affair that brought liked-minded people together to embrace Wichita’s entrepreneurial future.
Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple, Wichita Vice Mayor and District VI City Council Member Cindy Claycomb and District 4 Sedgwick County Commissioner Lacey Cruse all spoke about how Groover Labs, a nonprofit organization, will help serve as a catalyst for the area’s startup culture. With a focus on product development, Groover Labs brings together a collaborative environment that features coworking space and a makerspace that will open this spring with a wood shop, metal shop, electronics lab, fab lab and studio rental space.
Co-founders Curt Gridley and Tracy Hoover invested $5 million in Groover Labs to give people a place to work together on new ideas and businesses.
As Gridley mentioned in his grand opening remarks, Groover Labs “jumped in” to help reinvigorate Wichita’s economy and hopes others will “jump with us.”
If you missed the grand opening, please contact us for a tour.
ICYMI: Rise of the Rest Road Trip with Steve Case sets sights on Wichita
Rise of the Rest Road Trip with Steve Case will be making a stop in Wichita to hear from entrepreneurs ready to pitch. Up for grabs is $100,000. Applications are due by Feb. 24.
Wichita is one of five cities/regions the Rise of the Rest Road Trip with Steve Case will visit in April.
The stop is a welcome sign that people are paying attention to Wichita area startups. The tour also is visiting Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oklahoma City; northwest Arkansas and St. Louis.
Check out this great story from Carrie Rengers at The Wichita Eagle, copied below, about the Rise of the Rest Road Trip with Steve Case.
Here’s a link to the story online.
Wichita bills itself as an entrepreneurial town, but former America Online chairman and CEO — and one-time Wichitan — Steve Case has some sobering statistics about how many venture capital dollars are invested here.
In 2019, he says, 75% of those dollars went to three states — California, New York and Massachusetts, with California alone getting 50%.
All of Kansas got less than 1%, Case says.
“That’s what we’re trying to reverse.”
Case is going to try to help with the Rise of the Rest Road Trip in April, when he’ll visit Wichita and make four other Midwestern stops — in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, St. Louis and northwest Arkansas.
The Rise of the Rest Seed Fund started at Revolution, the Washington, D.C.-based investment firm where Case is the chairman and CEO.
“Our basic focus is backing the next generation of entrepreneurs,” Case says.
In 2014, Revolution started the fund, which today has $150 million, to help support start-ups in places that don’t typically see much venture capital investment.
“Iconic entrepreneurs,” as Case calls them, such as Jeff Bezos along with some well-known entrepreneurial families such as the Kochs in Kansas and the Waltons in Arkansas, back Rise of the Rest.
“The overall goal is to level the playing field so everybody everywhere really feels like they have a shot at the American dream,” Case says.
This is the second Rise of the Rest Road Trip.
“Wichita has been on our radar for a while,” Case says.
He said he was in Wichita last year to visit with father-and-son Charles and Chase Koch in part about Rise of the Rest.
Case says he also visited Wichita State University and its Experiential Engineering Building.
He says he got a sense that some things were starting to happen here.
“It just struck us as the perfect kind of city to visit.”
Case will visit Wichita on April 20 and has a full day planned of community meetings and a pitch competition in which area entrepreneurs can share their start-up ideas and make pitches for why investors should support them. Those interested can find out more at www.events.revolution.com.
Case says there are sometimes as many as 100 applicants, and the top eight are selected to make pitches in person.
At least one — though it could be more — is chosen for a minimum of a $100,000 investment.
“We want venture capital-like returns,” Case says.
For anyone doing a start-up, Case says people should think of problems to solve or opportunities to seize.
“Something you believe you have a particular insight into and passion about.”
Also, he says, anyone doing a start-up should build a team.
“Entrepreneurship is a team sport.”
Case’s own entrepreneurial roots trace back to Wichita in the early 1980s when he was director of new pizza development for Pizza Hut.
“Actually, the first time I ever got online was when I was in Wichita.”
So he’s in a unique position to judge whether Wichita is more of an entrepreneurial town than most, as Wichitans tend to boast. Case is careful about that, though.
“It’s a little bit like asking a parent which child they prefer.”
During his brief trip to Wichita last year, Case says he noticed that “it was a lot different than when I’d been there previously,” particularly downtown.
He visited the Pizza Hut Museum at WSU, but Case says he didn’t have much time to tour the city.
“So I’m looking forward to returning.”
2020 Hardware Cup is open for startups
At Groover Labs, we’re all about fueling collaboration and product development, so we wanted to be sure you knew about this fabulous opportunity — The 2020 AlphaLab Gear Hardware Cup.
Hey, makers: AlphaLab Gear has launched its 2020 Hardware Cup and will award a $50,000 grand prize for the best physical product startup. At Groover Labs, we’re all about fueling collaboration and product development, so we wanted to be sure you knew about this fabulous opportunity.
The Hardware Cup is a pitch competition for early-stage hardware startups, according to information from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company.
AlphaLab plans to tour six cities — Pittsburgh, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, Raleigh, and San Jose — to find and highlight the most promising physical product startups in the nation. (Companies located outside of these cities will receive a travel stipend to compete at the events.) Winners in each city will receive cash and prizes as well as a chance to win a $50,000 grand prize at the International Finals in May.
Any startup with a physical product component can apply: manufactured products, IoT/connected devices, health/medical, consumer products, consumer electronics, food, fashion, robotics and more.
Application information is here. The application deadline for our region is 11:59 p.m. Feb. 23.
In the house: Startup Grind Wichita Pitch Battle
The first-ever Startup Grind Wichita Pitch Battle brought high energy recently to Groover Labs.
The evening was a perfect illustration of the collaborative community we’re endeavoring to build for south central Kansas.
In the house: Startup Grind Wichita Pitch Battle
The first-ever Startup Grind Wichita Pitch Battle packed Groover Labs' event center with high energy this past Thursday evening as five teams pitched their businesses to a team of judges.
The evening was a perfect illustration of the collaborative community we are building at Groover Labs.
The startups — Filimin, KingFit, OwnIT, Konexial and Midwest eSports — each had five minutes to present from our stage.
Judges then peppered each team with follow-up questions about business plans, growth opportunities and financials. The judges were:
Jason Toevs | Co-Founder/CTO | QuiCC
Maggie Koops | Operations Manager | Groover Labs
Gary Oborny | Chairman/CEO | Occidental Management, Inc
Josh Oeding | President/CEO | e2e Accelerator
Becky Tuttle | Council Member | City of Wichita
Midwest eSports, which puts on semi-professional video game tournaments across the country, won the battle, claiming a $500 prize that Oborny doubled. Midwest eSports also will receive a 50 percent subsidy toward their exhibition space at the Startup Grind Global 2020 in San Francisco.
We appreciate Startup Grind Wichita letting us play host for the event.
Ready for a tour?
Our next hotseat open house will be noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18. Come enjoy coffee from Local Roasters and Christmas cookies.
Meet Paul Maseberg
What does Paul do at Groover Labs? Paul is our volunteer IT manager. His main focus has been getting our network up and running. He also is developing the member portal software for our website and has helped install several security features.
What's his background? Paul went to Fort Hays State University and earned bachelor's degrees in physics and computer science. After graduation, he began working at AccuWeather, where he's been a software engineer for more than 11 years. The team he works with provides customer weather warnings for enterprise clients. "For example, we stop trains if the wind is blowing hard," he said.
But who is he, really? Paul is a big believer in the African Ubuntu philosophy of life, often translated as "I am because we are." He said his time volunteering at Groover Labs, a nonprofit, "is focused on doing what I can to be part of the 'we'."
What else should you know about Paul? Paul is open about his dyslexia. The struggle to read and write has helped him overcome obstacles, he said. "It also has confused a lot of people who try to read my emails."