<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/1/1579118089206.jpeg" alt="Olathe students learn computer programming in a high school class last spring. Tech companies employ tens of thousands of people in the region, but advocates see room for growth. Celia Llopis-Jepsen / Kansas News Service " />
 <figcaption>Olathe students learn computer programming in a high school class last spring. Tech companies employ tens of thousands of people in the region, but advocates see room for growth. Celia Llopis-Jepsen / Kansas News Service </figcaption>
 </figure>By CELIA LLOPIS JEPSEN <a href="https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-city-and-kansas-have-nearly-200-tech-startups-hurdles-abound#stream/0">Kansas News Service</a>Kansas City, Missouri — Time was, a fledgling tech 
company called CivicPlus had to explain to prospective customers why it 
was based in Kansas — and not some tech-heavy coastal city.“We 
said, ‘Hey, you get Midwest values, but with Silicon Valley quality,’ ” 
recalled Ward Morgan, owner of the government software maker based in 
the college town of Manhattan. “It did throw people off to think that 
there was a tech company in Kansas.”Today CivicPlus, founded in the 1990s, serves 3,500 cities and counties on two continents.Investors
 see fertile ground in Kansas and Kansas City for more tech startups to 
take root. Far more have already done so than the public might realize, 
former Google vice president Brian McClendon says, yet the region falls 
short of its potential.“We need a lot more (of) both investment 
and employment to make this region vibrant,” he said. “Every industry is
 going to be upended by tech, and if you don’t have those tech 
companies, the industries you currently have will get replaced.”McClendon
 and his wife — fellow Silicon Valley tech veteran and angel investor 
Beth Ellyn McClendon — unveiled this week their efforts to map out every
 tech startup in Kansas and Kansas City in hopes of making the sector 
more visible to prospective investors and tech workers.The Lawrence residents found <a href="https://freestateforge.com/map" target="_blank">nearly 200 tech startups</a>,
 and hundreds more players with longer histories. Think Cerner and 
Garmin, two of the region’s biggest tech companies that employ thousands
 of employees each and were founded in the '70s and '80s.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/1/1579117965011.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>The bulk of startups — more than three-fourths — sit in the Kansas City area. Farther west, clusters have sprung up in Wichita and Lawrence. Beyond that, things get pretty sparse.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/1/1579117999474.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>The McClendons identified nearly 30 tech startups in Lawrence, 
population 97,000, and none in Topeka, population 125,000. (Local media 
in the state capital have reported, however, <a href="https://tkmagazine.com/blog/2019/8/8/topeka-selected-as-animal-healthag-tech-startup-accelerator-location-for-global-innovation-platform" target="_blank">plans for a startup accelerator</a>
 focused on animal and agricultural science. The area stretching from 
Kansas State University and Manhattan through Kansas City to the 
University of Missouri in Columbia is often referred to as the animal 
health corridor because of the researchers and businesses concentrated 
there.)Kansas City venture capital firm Flyover Capital backs 
tech startups across a large swath of the country outside the handful of
 East and West Coast states that get the most attention from big-time 
investors.“We’re seeing the tech ecosystem start to really ramp 
up in Kansas City,” Flyover Capital principal Dan Kerr said. “We looked 
at more deals in 2019 than any other year — so, more people reaching out
 to us. … Demand for capital in flyover country is very real.”The
 center of the country offers cheaper operating costs, investors say, 
and attractive housing prices and schools. And accelerators and other 
supports have landed on the scene to help out.The region suffers, though, from a shortage of computer programmers and other tech-savvy types.<a href="https://code.org/promote/ks" target="_blank">Kansas pumped out</a> fewer than 450 computer science bachelor’s degrees in 2017. Advocates who argue that’s not enough <a href="https://www.kcur.org/post/can-kansas-schools-teach-computer-coding-without-eating-time-math-and-science#stream/0" target="_blank">have pushed for more programming courses</a>
 at the high school level. The Kansas State Board of Education is 
considering a proposal this month to let coding classes count toward 
high school graduation — something that most other states already do.Tech
 startups in Kansas and Kansas City can struggle, too, to find their way
 to the right investors interested in their niche, said Darcy Howe, an 
angel investor who founded the KCRise Fund that focuses on startups in 
Kansas and west Missouri.And only the startups with the fastest 
growth, she said, can hope to attract investment from venture capital 
firms willing to take risks.“I’d say we need more capital for 
the really, really early ones,” she said, “to keep them alive and get 
them in the right direction.”Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports on consumer health and education for the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Celia_LJ">@celialj_LJ</a>
 or email her at celia@kcur.org. The Kansas News Service is a
 collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public
 Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their 
connection to public policy.

KC and Kansas have nearly 200 tech startups, but hurdles abound