Funding Stories

Hyleme George, IgniteX accelerator

LaunchKC, Black & Veatch open COVID-19 grants competition with $250K (or more) for startups

Editor’s note: The following is part of Startland News’ ongoing coverage of the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Kansas City’s entrepreneur community, as well as how innovation is helping to drive a new normal in the ecosystem. Click here to follow related stories as they develop. A newly announced grants competition could boost both the health…

Rodney Sampson, Opportunity Hub

Lead Bank donates $25K for OHUB.KC to support minority-led startups during ‘unprecedented times’

The moment is now for corporate partners to support entrepreneur initiatives like OHUB.KC, said Rodney Sampson, just a day before the KC.UP minority accelerator pushes ahead with a virtual demo day to showcase its first cohort. Kansas City-based Lead Bank on Thursday announced a $25,000 donation to OHUB.KC — a joint effort between the Economic…

Johnny Wolff, Homeroom

$200K funding infusion helps Homeroom expand its ‘coliving’ footprint across KC, beyond

Flexing a finalized $200,000 funding round, Prairie Village-based coliving startup Homeroom is poised to dominate the Midwestern half of an emerging industry, said Johnny Wolff. “I think in 2016 [coliving] was a little niche maybe, but it feels like the market is really emerging and establishing itself — it’s a really interesting space to be…

RFP360 team

Five Elms Capital doubles down on RFP360, bringing its investment to $12M

RFP360 proved its worth and ability to push itself in the months following Five Elms Capital’s first investment in the software platform, said Thomas Kershisnik. The payoff? Five Elms today announced a second strategic growth investment in RFP360 — bringing its total backing of the Leawood-based startup to $12 million, said Kershisnik, managing director at…

Jody Brazil, Rich Mogull, and Mike Rothman, DisruptOps

DisruptOps raises $9M Series A with serial entrepreneur, cyber security veterans taming the cloud

With security threats to cloud-enabled businesses outpacing the ability of most companies to respond, a fresh funding infusion is expected to help DisruptOps strengthen its team and its ability to react, said Jody Brazil. The Kansas City startup — a SaaS-based cloud security management platform that helps enterprises address the critical challenges of cloud security at…