KC Symphony exec tries his hand at booktech founder after shelving dot-com era entrepreneurship

An injury that immobilized Danny Beckley’s wrist put a sudden halt to his hobbies — from woodworking and gardening to piloting planes — but opened a new chapter on entrepreneurial side hustles and returned him to the tech world he’d previously left behind to lead orchestras.

“My wrist doesn’t move anymore. That’s kept me from hand work, so I didn’t have that outlet for creativity,” said Beckley, whose day job is working as president and CEO of the Kansas City Symphony. “In the absence of being able to do anything with my hands, I was able to at least work on a computer.”

Six months of evenings and weekends behind the keyboard helped indulge his creative needs, he said, culminating in two apps — Home Library Companion and Bookstore Companion — built under his Creative Sonar LLC, and now available on iTunes.

For some, working on apps when away from work still feels like work, Beckley said. But not him.

“It’s just such an escape from the normal mindset that it actually relaxes me,” he said.

It’s work that’s familiar and fun for Beckley. In college, he studied music education and trombone performance while moonlighting as a software entrepreneur. Starting his freshman year, he funded his tuition with the startups he created.

“This was at the beginning of the dot-com boom,” Beckley said. “I started hiring my roommates and put them to work doing things for me.”

The ventures that started in his dorm room continued until he left the tech world to run orchestras full time. Now, the problem-solving and creative thinking involved in development help Beckley balance work and life.

“I like what I do. I like running orchestras. This scratches an itch,” he said. “It’s like I’ve plugged into the USB port on my arm and I’m charging my battery for the next day. It makes me better at my main job because I’ve got the energy that I’ve had from the creative pursuits in the evening.”

Beckley’s apps also connect to his efforts to be a whole person — not defined just by his professional work — and pain points he experienced as a voracious but discerning reader.

“My wife and I love books. One of our favorite things to do, especially in Kansas City, is to go to used bookstores and just explore,” Beckley said, noting he and his wife Nicole have a robust home library of probably a thousand books.

“You can go online and ask questions, but we’ve got all this knowledge in our house that’s far deeper,” he said. “What if we could ask a question against what we have in our house and have it point us to the right books?”

Home Library Companion does just that, Beckley said.

By scanning a reader’s bookshelf, the iPhone app catalogs their home library and records the shelf locations. Unlike other book organization apps, it does this via photos of the shelves. That means users don’t have to individually scan barcodes. Then, households can share the information on the app or online and know exactly what books they own and where they are.

Beckley’s other app, Bookstore Companion, started as an extension of the same concept.

While browsing a bookstore, he realized that volumes weren’t really curated, he said. So, using the same technology, Beckley created an app that identifies books in a store and pinpoints those that are popular, getting coverage or highly regarded.

“I would like to know which books are worth my time,” he said. “Out of the camera view, it points out books that you might consider that stand out. It just helps curate your browsing in a way that you might not be able to do on your own.”

Now that the apps are available on iTunes, Beckley is using the apps himself and hoping the modest app fees cover costs.

“I’m really just refining and continuing to evolve these things and improve them over time,” he said. “Hopefully people find them useful.”