We added a new pod of desks, and we made them in the Maker Labs. Over the past few months, we’ve added a lot of new members, so we needed create some more space.
Our hotseats are the easiest and most affordable membership level we offer on a month-to-month basis. But what are they? Hotseats are open-area workstations that are available to members and day pass users on a first-come, first-served basis. They don’t have permanent owners and cannot be formally reserved.
Longtime Groover Labs member and Flint Hills Group founder Dave Cunningham launched the Whiskey Shelf app at the beginning of 2023. In February, the app went live on the App Store and Google Play. Read the latest updates about what Dave and his team are up to, how they came up with Whiskey Shelf (including experience with Campfire), and more!
We are thrilled to receive funding from the Building a Stronger Economy (BASE) 2.0 economic development grant for our CyberLink Infrastructure Expansion Project. BASE funds are intended to address infrastructure and economic development needs, and our grant award will allow us to continue critical projects we had to cancel or delay because of the Covid-19 global pandemic.
Groover Labs is proud to be an approved partner for the Kansas Department of Commerce Proof of Concept Grant announced on July 1, 2021. Qualified applicants are eligible to apply for grants of $5,000 - $25,000, and applications must be submitted through an approved partner.
On Tuesday, June 17, Tom Chapman of Chapman and Co. presented his “Accelerate Wichita: Regional Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Report” to an audience of interested startup ecosystem supporters at Groover Labs. You can read the report in its entirety here. In 2020, the Greater Wichita Partnership, an economic development organization focused on the greater Wichita metropolitan region, hired Chapman and Co. - an expert in entrepreneurial ecosystem evaluation - to analyze and develop strategic next steps for Wichita’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
We recently wrapped up our first VC Huddle, and we want to extend a big THANK YOU to everyone who joined us! We had a wonderful time, and we hope you did too. Thank you to Balaji Gopinath and Greg White of Kubera Capital, Dan Kerr of Flyover Capital, and Mary Kate Love of Koch Disruptive Technologies. And, of course, thank you to members of the Groover Labs advisory team, which include Dave Cunningham, Mark Janzen, Greg Giefer and Carie Lemack.
Today, we’re excited to announce VC Huddle: Extended, a panel discussion and networking event with another set of venture capital firms. The event takes place at Groover Labs and virtually on Tuesday, July 13, from 4-6 p.m., and we hope you’ll join us. The discussion, titled “Early-stage Capital for Midwest-based Startups,” will feature Mike Freeman, CEO, Innosphere Ventures, Maggie Kenefake, General Partner, Royal Street Ventures, and Mark Janzen, Vice President of Operations, Avalara. The panel will be moderated by Rob Gerlach (Executive Director of Tech Transfer and Commercialization, Wichita State University). Stick around after the discussion for networking, drinks, and snacks.
Open Call! Feature your artwork for sale at Groover Labs. This call is open to any 2-D media that can be hung on a wall. We want to feature local artists as we begin to host more large events and have a flow of people in our 42,000 square-foot coworking, office, event, and maker spaces located in Old Town!
1 Million Cups is back, and it will take place at Groover Labs! We are excited to host 1MC, which begins at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 7. We will present alongside Marquette Atkins’ wonderful Destination Innovation Camp. As a program of the Kauffman Foundation, 1 Million Cups works with entrepreneurs, empowering them with the tools and resources to break down barriers that stand in the way of starting and growing their businesses. Mr. Kauffman believed it was a fundamental right for anyone who had a big idea to be able to bring it to life—and we're here to fulfill that mission.
We were recently featured by the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce as a story in their Small Business Champs video series, which highlights innovation during the 2020 global pandemic
DARI Motion uses a constellation of high-speed, high-definition cameras instead of markers, hence “markerless”, to record their subjects' movements. The data feeds into proprietary software in real-time, which compares their moves against a vast trove of human movement data. The software generates a report that shows how the subject’s movement compares against the field. One DARI Motion capture system can easily collect up to 75 subjects in an 8-hour day, which makes the process scalable. It used to take six months to collect biomechanical data like this; DARI does it in minutes.
Groover Labs is excited to share the Kansas Micro-Internship Program with you. Through this program, Kansas-based companies and organizations can receive grant funding for Micro-Internship opportunities as long as the selected student is enrolled in a Kansas public college or university. Micro-Internships are short-term, paid, professional assignments that take place in all areas of an organization. These projects can be completed remotely on a year-round basis and typically range from 5 to 40 hours of work. Projects are typically due within a month of kick-off and provide your busy team with immediate support on short-term tasks.
