photo by: Bremen Keasey

Developers and entreprenuers mill about at KU's Innovation Park before some Launchpad trainings. Launchpad is a weekend-long pitch competition and "Hack-a-thon" that aims to help boot up startup ideas in Douglas County.

It’s a story that’s become a cliche in American culture: A couple of people in a garage come up with a high-tech business idea, pitch it to an investor and become a “unicorn” — a successful startup company.

But even when people manage to make something as impactful as Apple or Facebook, those unicorns usually don’t settle in Kansas. They prefer other parts of the country — Silicon Valley, Seattle or New York City.

Kyle Johnson, the CEO and founder of Bixy, wants to change that mindset.

Johnson helped create Douglas County CORE in 2021, a group of entrepreneurs and other community stakeholders who want promising startup businesses to work in Douglas County. The group has held pitch competitions each April since 2023, but wanted to add another layer to help entrepreneurs flesh out their ideas and make them more likely to succeed as fundable companies.

Mike Beasterfeld, a software engineer and founder of HackDoCo — a group of computer programmers who get together and work on coding projects for business ideas — had attended events called “hackathons” in Kansas City where tech workers got together to work on making business ideas real. That idea was something he wanted to bring to Lawrence.

So Johnson and Beasterfield paired those two ideas and created Launchpad — a combination hackathon and pitch competition with the goal to grow the local tech startup pipeline.

photo by: Kyle Johnson/Contributed Photo

Participants listen to a presentation at the 2024 Launchpad event in Lawrence.

The event opened Friday at the University of Kansas’s Innovation Park and will run through Sunday, where winners from the 13 groups that entered the competition will earn $15,000 in prizes for their company.

Johnson said the event, by bringing together the tech and idea sides, plays into the larger goal of making Lawrence a better place for these businesses.

“The whole thought process behind this event is part of the bigger vision of making successful startups,” Johnson said.

Beasterfeld said the first startup event he went to was in Lawrence about 10 years ago. However, the group that ran it was there for just one year and left, presumably because they took their startups elsewhere. Beasterfeld said wanting to create those kinds of experiences, where he learned a lot, was a huge reason why he wanted to combine forces with Johnson and do it themselves.

“If no (other group) is going to try to do this, then let’s do it,” Beasterfeld said. “People have lots of ideas, but if you never work the effort to turn it into something, they die on the vine.”

Johnson noted there are people working in isolated pockets in the tech industry in Lawrence, and he said CORE started specifically hosting events with the Lawrence Technology Guild to bring people with different kinds of skills together. The hope is to have the idea and development sides come together, much like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple.

“We need to intentionally identify these types of people and get them to similar events,” Johnson said.

With that combination, the goal is that Lawrence can create a mini tech hub that can incubate startups. If funding increases in Lawrence, Johnson hopes that the “pipeline” of tech ideas can potentially add high-paying jobs and millions of dollars into the city’s economy.

The first step, Johnson and Beasterfeld hope, is having some more successful ideas spring out with the Launchpad event. Johnson said anyone was able to sign up for the event, including students at KU who have been coding since high school or entrepreneurs who have never considered entering the tech industry. Johnson and Beasterfeld said there would be plenty of chances for mentorship and training — Friday afternoon included trainings on how to successfully write pitch decks and create basic coding prototypes.

Saturday is when the “Hack-a-Thon” began, with teams allowed to start working on their startups at 10 a.m. Johnson said the event would be open for 24 hours, with teams able to work until “3 p.m. or 3 a.m.”

Beasterfeld said the structure of having only 24 hours to come up with an idea is a really good way to improve on problem solving skills that are crucial for developers. The short window of time might seem impossible, so working through that limit to make a minimum is a good test that helps developers find out more about their tools and about themselves.

“It’s always amazing what comes out after 24 hours that didn’t even exist except in somebody’s mind,” Beasterfeld said. “There’s some magic in artificially restricting yourself and really challenging yourself.”

Johnson said this event also helps better train entrepreneurs who are new to working in the technology field on what the “essentials” are for getting your idea off the ground. Having all kinds of entrepreneurs network together at the event can help teach those essentials and save “years of effort” in starting a business.

Johnson knows the event is ambitious and a little bit of an experiment as well, but he has seen things grow. The initial pitch competition in April 2023, he said 12 people presented. The next year? 57 people signed up for 15 slots.

“It’s building,” Johnson said.

Although the winners of the competition will be announced later Sunday, the two see this event as a win for Douglas County. Johnson said CORE aims to have the Launchpad event happen year after year. He and Beasterfeld believe the ability to practice your skills, potentially find mentorship and see ideas that can inspire are just as good for growing the tech industry in Kansas as the money given to winners.

“It’s invaluable to see someone else’s presentation and think to yourself, ‘How did they do that?'” Beasterfeld said. “It just expands your knowledge of what can be done and what can happen.”