Opinion Stories
Holt: Early-stage capital isn’t Kansas City’s biggest problem
Rack your brain and create a list of local tech businesses that have successfully raised early-stage capital in Kansas City. The list is actually quite extensive. Now try to list the tech firms that have raised later stage capital in Kansas City — defined as closing a round of $5 million or more. It’s going…
Students’ skills gap dings the 21st century workforce
Whether openly acknowledged or silently understood, there is a growing awareness in the education community that students are not prepared for the 21st century workforce. Millennials nearly triple the current national unemployment rate and more than half of 2015 college graduates have no — none, zilch, nada — career prospects on the foreseeable horizon. …
Is your pitch getting emotional? Because it should be
When it comes to selling your product or service, the devil truly is in the details. Despite what bad salesmen might tell you, people don’t buy based on features or price. Decision making is rooted primarily in the part of our brain that controls emotions. Science shows that regardless of whether we are buying a…
Cut the crap: How to discern worthwhile advice
In my early days as an entrepreneur, I ran into a lot of consultants who claimed to be “experts” and guaranteed they could help me out. Then I’d do some fact-checking and discover they were neither reliable nor experts, and their advice wasn’t worth the space in our email inboxes. In the last few years,…
Pettet to students: Get off your duffs
Editor’s note: The following letter was submitted to Startland News by Zach Pettet, a recent graduate of the University of Kansas City-Missouri, in response to a recent conversation on student engagement in the area entrepreneurial community. Dear students of Kansas City, You’ve been the subject of some open letter writing recently. Have you noticed? Probably not….
