Woman-led Stories

ChowNow kansas city

LA-based ChowNow hungry for its new Crossroads regional office, KC tech talent

Order up! Los Angeles based ChowNow is ready to serve the Kansas City startup space, Candice Taylor said as the company prepares to open its first regional office in the Crossroads Arts District. “It’s really important for us to be somewhere that has an amazing [food] scene and there’s certainly no shortage of incredible local…

Sarah Mote, KCSourceLink

KCultivator Q&A: Sarah Mote inspired by radical thinkers, lowbrow humor, taking KCSourceLink social

Editor’s note: KCultivators is a lighthearted profile series to highlight people who are meaningfully enriching Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. The KCultivator Series is sponsored by Plexpod, a progressive coworking platform offering next generation workspace for entrepreneurs, startups, and growth-stage companies of all sizes. Quiet startups fueled by overcoming struggles are always the most fascinating stories,…

Hustle + Heart Liberty apparel company

Liberty screen printer brings Hustle + Heart in the face of early-stage failure

Liberty-based apparel company Hustle + Heart wouldn’t have found success without failure, said Serena Kotalik. “[You should] never give up whether you’re starting a business like mine or any other,” said Kotalik, founder of the primarily wholesale, online company, which sells many of its wares through a VIP Facebook group. “With each [failure] I have…

Nounou

Mom-and-popping it: Nounou platform curates trusted babysitters for JoCo families

Nounou Neighbors takes the fear out of the surprisingly cutthroat babysitting industry, said Molly Smalley, noting her online platform raised 200 percent client base growth in 2018. “As a mom, finding [a babysitter] is exhausting and friends never want to give you their sitter,” laughed Molly, founder of the Kansas-based babysitting service with her husband,…

Andrew Carlson and Julie Korona, Paloma Post

Duo designs Paloma Post greeting cards for more inclusive representation of couples

As she stood flipping through an endless sea of birthday cards, Julie Korona couldn’t find a single one that would send the right message to her then-fiancé, Tyler, she recalled. “All of the cards that I was looking through either said ‘husband’ or were super generic,” said Korona, co-founder of Paloma Post — a newly…