DAVE FEYERABEND | DK Ventures

Kansas City has long been known as an entrepreneurial town. That isn’t lost on Dave Feyerabend, who knows a good idea when he sees one, and is building a business on helping others turn their vision into reality. He is co-founder and managing member of Lee’s Summit-based D&K Ventures, a business incubator for start-up companies. “We specialize in concept validation, private equity funding and strategic business development,” he says. D&K’s six portfolio companies, which generated combined revenues of more than $3 million last year, range from the complex (providing pain-relief treatments for arthritics) to the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that simple (producing a mechanism to quickly restring hooded sweatshirts). “We help entrepreneurs shorten the time between idea conception and going to market,” says Feyerabend, 29. He and business partner Kelly Yarborough plan to double D&K’s capacity to support startups over the next five years, and expand into acquisition of distressed companies. And, like Johnny Appleseed, Feyerabend intends to keep planting: “We envision programs with local colleges and universities that provide opportunities for students to gain real-world entrepreneurial experience,” he said.

PHIL GLYNN | Travois New Markets

There are niche markets, and then there is Phil Glynn’s idea of carving out a business enterprise. Four years ago, he was hired at Travois Inc. to launch a new business line that could expand on the company’s core mission of providing low-income housing tax credits to help American Indians build homes. The federal New Markets Tax Credit program, Glynn believed, had opportunity written all over it. Today, it delivers tens of millions of dollars in new-market credits to start-up businesses owned by Indians. That fits his core belief that entrepreneurialism means doing well while doing good. Travois helps companies navigate a complicated application process, and that money fosters economic development serving a demographic long ranked among America’s poorest. Just one example: “We invested $17.3 million in the non-profit Coastal Villages Region Fund,” said Glynn, 29. The fund “makes money from fishing in the Bering Sea and provides scholarships for Alaskan Native youth, support centers for rural Alaskan fishermen and other programs for the villages.” Indian Country also offers potential in the emerging renewable-energy sector, Glynn said, and he sees that as an area of growth over the next five years.

JOSEF LOEFFLER | Blue Star Benefits

In the soul of entrepreneurs everywhere, there is the realization that money isn’t the goal, it’s simply a means of keeping score as you work toward your real goals. That’s why Josef Loeffler, now the president of the insurance-services company his father founded, has a field of vision that goes well beyond the company’s bottom line. “We don’t want to be big, we want to be good,” the 24-year-old says. “Our growth will reflect the quality of the product. Proudly, our business is growing.” And that growth, Loeffler says, will eventually help underwrite his long-term goals to help strengthen Kansas City’s not-for-profit community. To get there, Blue Star is focused on helping its small business clients meet a blizzard of regulatory challenges, health-care reform being only one. One tactic for doing that is through Blue Star’s own embrace of cloud computing, hailed as the new information technology standard for its reliance on third-party hardware and software for meeting business needs. “As businesses specialize,” Loeffler says, “it’s important for processes and data to be transparent, so professionals can collaborate and communicate quickly and easily. Cloud computing makes this possible.”

MEAGAN FLYNN MESMER| Smartmouth Productions

“An entrepreneurial spirit,” says Meagan Flynn Mesmer, “is not an option in the film industry— it’s a prerequisite.” Especially if you relocate from Los Angeles to Kansas City. Here, says Mesmer, “waiting to be cast by a director or approached by a writer with an idea would mean the end of my career.” No prima donna, Mesmer decided to generate her own concepts, write scripts and produce the very films that give her the opportunities to act and direct. Among her growing body of work, she’s been a part of the regional Emmy-winning “The Unreal Housewives of Kansas City,” a Web-based spoof of the Bravo channel’s “Real Housewives” series, and had a supporting role as an airline flight attendant in the Golden Globe-nominated “Up in the Air.” One of the perks of the latter? Shooting scenes with George Clooney. “To survive in the film industry requires creativity, imagination and the spirit of a true entrepreneur,” says Mesmer, 29. “To me, there’s nothing more entrepreneurial than designing, executing and marketing my own work. Success or failure rests completely on my shoulders, a challenge I look forward to every day.”