There is a lot going on in Kansas City, these days. Google has launched it's product and the entrepreneur community is buzzing with activity. It's a hot bed for startups, and it's being coined as "Silicon Prairie". In 2008, Silicon Prairie News was founded to discuss the developments in the startup scene in the flyover states of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. SPN, launched Big Omaha a couple years ago, and today was the inaugural Big Kansas City conference kickoff, where top innovators, startup founders and digital disrupters share their wisdom in an old school airplane hanger, that is now the Airline History Museum.
Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, started off the day by talking about how Kansas City has grown over the years via it's solid infrastructure. The Missouri River, it's railroads, it's central location for airlines… but the infrastructure of the future is digital.
Sprint has been very innovative over time. In fact, Sprint had the first mobile phone with a camera phone and it was first national carrier to offer 4G. Speaking of innovation, Sprint was awarded business patents in 2012 at a rate of 2.5 patents per day.
One amusing quote by Dan Hesse, "There are 10 cellphones created every day… for each baby that is born." That's ridiculous!! Babies don't even need phones! [joke]
Sprint has really embraced startups in the Kansas City area, and Hesse stated that they actively looks for ways to integrate Sprint within the community.
Next up was Alexis Ohanion, the cofounder of Reddit.
His credentials are quite impressive. He invests and consults with over 50 startups and is an original YCombinator startup and current YCombinator ambassador.
One of his key messages was "Have an idea? Start doing it." Alexis had a "Waffle House Epiphany", as he called it and decided not to be a lawyer… and instead work on a startup idea that he had called, "My Mobile Menu" or Mmm. It would have been an app that allowed people to order food from their phone in an age before smartphones.
During the spring break of his fourth year in college, one of his cofounder Steve's favorite internet pundits, Paul Graham, was speaking at Boston with a talk on "How to Start a Startup". Alexis and Steve went up to Paul Graham after his speech and pitched him on his concept. My Mobile Menu was gonna take over the world… Paul just launched Ycombinator, they didn't' like the MMM idea… but they liked Steve and Alexis. They ended up ditching their original idea to work with Paul Graham in Boston. Next thing you know, Reddit was born.
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