The Launchpad event aims to bring together Lawrence developers and businesspeople and serve as an incubator for the creation of a technology hub

photo: Bremen Keasey

Developers and entrepreneurs mill about the KU Innovation Park ahead of some Launchpad training sessions. Launchpad is a weekend-long pitch competition and “Hack-a-thon” designed to help launch startup ideas in Douglas County.

It’s a story that has become a cliché in American culture: a few people in a garage come up with a high-tech business idea, pitch it to an investor, and become a “unicorn” – a successful startup.

But even when people manage to create something as influential as Apple or Facebook, these unicorns don’t usually settle in Kansas. They prefer other parts of the country – Silicon Valley, Seattle or New York.

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

Johnson helped launch Douglas County CORE in 2021, a group of entrepreneurs and other community stakeholders who want promising startups to work in Douglas County. The group has been hosting pitch competitions in April since 2023, but wanted to add another layer to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life and increase their chances of succeeding as financeable businesses.

Mike Beasterfeld, a software engineer and founder of HackDoCo — a group of developers who meet and work on coding projects for business ideas — participated in events called “hackathons” in Kansas City, where tech workers came together to work on turning business ideas into reality. He wanted to bring this idea to Lawrence.

So Johnson and Beasterfield combined the two ideas and created Launchpad, a combination hackathon and pitch competition designed to grow the local tech startup pipeline.

photo: Kyle Johnson/photo submitted by author

Attendees listen to a presentation during the Launchpad 2024 event in Lawrence.

The event began on Friday at the University of Kansas Innovation Park and will last through Sunday, with the winners from the 13 groups that entered the competition receiving prizes worth $15,000 for their company.

Johnson said the event, which combines technology and ideas, contributes to the broader goal of making Lawrence a better place for these companies.

“The entire thought process behind this event is part of a broader vision of creating 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 only there for a year and left, probably because they took their startups elsewhere. Beasterfeld said the desire to create this type of experience where he learned a lot was a huge reason he wanted to team up with Johnson and do it himself.

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

Johnson noted that there are isolated people working in the technology industry in Lawrence and said CORE has started specifically hosting events with the Lawrence Technology Guild to connect people with different skills. We hope that idea and development will come together like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple.

“We need to be intentional about identifying these types of people and inviting them to similar events,” Johnson said.

The goal is for Lawrence to create a mini-tech hub that can incubate startups. Johnson hopes that if funding increases in Lawrence, a “pipeline” of technology ideas could potentially bring high-wage jobs and millions of dollars to the city’s economy.

Johnson and Beasterfeld hope the first step will be for more successful ideas to emerge at the Launchpad event. Johnson said anyone could sign up for the event, including KU students who have been coding since high school and entrepreneurs who have never thought about entering the tech industry. Johnson and Beasterfeld said there will be plenty of opportunities for mentoring and training — Friday afternoon included training on how to effectively write presentations and create basic coding prototypes.

On Saturday, the “Hack-a-Thon” began, where teams could start working on their startups at 10 a.m. Johnson said the event would be open 24 hours and teams would be able to work until “3 p.m. or 3 a.m.”

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

“It’s always amazing what comes out 24 hours later that didn’t even exist except in someone’s mind,” Beasterfeld said. “There is magic in artificially limiting yourself and challenging yourself.”

Johnson said the event also helps better train entrepreneurs who are just starting out in the tech industry on what’s “necessary” to bring an idea to life. Connecting a network of entrepreneurs of all kinds at an event can help convey this essential information and save you “years of effort” when starting a business.

Johnson knows this event is ambitious and a bit experimental, but he’s seen it unfold. He said that in the first tender competition in April 2023, 12 people applied. Next year? 57 people signed up for 15 places.

“It’s building,” Johnson said.

Although the contest winners will be announced later Sunday, both see the event as a victory for Douglas County. Johnson said CORE’s goal is to host the Launchpad event year after year. He and Beasterfeld believe that the opportunity to practice their skills, potentially find a mentor and see that the ideas they can inspire are just as good for growing the tech industry in Kansas as the money given to the winners.

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