Bingo. An entrepreneur is born.

A startup is started up.

There have been a lot of “what if” moments in Kansas City. Our history is rich in entrepreneurs—Walt Disney, Joyce Hall, Henry and Richard Bloch, and Ewing Kauffman being only a few of the more famous. But, arguably, the enterprises started by Jim Stowers, Neil Patterson and Cliff Illig have had at least as much impact on Kansas City’s economy as their iconic forebears.

Now a younger generation is making its move, including technology entrepreneurs August Grasis III, founder of Handmark, Tim Barton, founder of Freightquote.com, and Dave Cummings, founder BATS Trading.

The consensus of this trio is that starting a tech firm here in Kansas City poses challenges, but being here and growing here is rewarding.

Handmark is a creator and packager of Web content specifically for mobile phones and other handheld devices. “Our motto is ‘We make Smart phones smarter,” says CEO August Grasis.

Grasis says that despite his com-pany’s eventual success, it wasn’t neces- sarily easy early on.

“Quite honestly, it was difficult to raise the money we needed here in town,” Grasis says. “And I’m from Kansas City. We ended up having to go to the Coasts to get the capital we needed. Having said that, our location—having our headquarters here in Kansas City—is fantastic. It’s great for recruiting and retaining top notch talent. Our team includes folks who have come here from Motorola, Sprint, Alltel, and Nokia. Being here allows us to focus on the things that matter. There are fewer distractions than there would be in cities on either Coast.”

Tim Barton, CEO at Freightquote.com agrees that a Kansas City address is no hindrance when it comes to recruiting. “We’ve been able to access excellent IT people here; and Kansas City is a much better location than the Coasts to build a large force of inside sales and service staff.”

What Barton and Grasis seem to be saying—as politely as possible is that we’re boring. Could be that’s not such a bad thing, if our more bland, sedate, Midwestern culture and life-style helps new companies here recruit young execs who value hard work, family, and community, more than workaholism, an edgy dating scene, and a hot nightlife.  

Kansas City may not be the most exciting place, but the companies started here are generating plenty of excitement within their industries. Dave Cummings, of BATS Trading has created an electronic marketplace that is poised to claim a place alongside the big boys of international stock trading—the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq.

“Several things have played a big role in our success,” says Cummings. “Including our technology, aggressive pricing and the coalition of broker-dealer owners and subscribers who use the BATS system. Also, obviously, our people have played a major role in helping us to become the third-largest market center in the country. Our Kansas City headquarters have played a huge role in our success. It’s enabled us to keep our costs much lower than those of our competitors, such as Nasdaq. And, as has been mentioned by others, it has served as a great recruiting ground for us.”

However, Cummings cautions Kansas City’s business, government, and community leaders to maintain a business-friendly environment. “There needs to be a commitment to work together to create and sustain a climate for successful entrepreneurial activity,” he says. “If key groups aren’t pulling in the same direction, success is going to be difficult.”

Grasis agrees. He says Kansas City needs to proactively cultivate an entrepreneurial culture. “We have great resources here—the Kauffman Foundation, and some very successful international firms that started out small. For start-ups, though, there are some pretty high initial hurdles.”

Freightquote’s Barton concedes that securing the capital for his start-up was difficult, and his Kansas City location didn’t exactly help.

“Frankly, early investors from California expressed concerns with building a technology company in Kansas,” he says. However, Barton seems to think that geography or business culture is not ultimately the determining factor in getting an entrepreneurial venture off the ground. “I think start up activity is more a function of access to start up capital—which for early stage companies is never easy to access.”

Freightquote provides shippers with easy and convenient access to price quotes from top freight carriers, allowing them to choose the most competitively attractive deal. The service also provides shippers with the Web-based tools to manage scheduling, records, and shipment tracking. 

“We do a very good job of addressing the ‘long tail’ of the freight shipping market—smaller shippers who appreciated our technology, even before it was fully mature,” says Barton. “We’ve diversified our sales and market efforts. Instead of just relying on technology and Web advertising, we’ve made substantial investments in sales and service people and those people make the difference. Kansas City has helped us find and keep good people.”

A study released last month by the Kauffman Foundation and researcher Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz, indicates that in 2006 entrepreneurial activity in the Midwest ebbed to its lowest level in eleven years. Kansas was one of five states (along with Alaska, North Dakota, New Mexico, and Tennessee) where entrepreneurial activity decreased most (by about 1% in Kansas). Entrepreneurial activity also dropped in Missouri in the same period, though not as much (by about 0.06%).

These numbers are not alarming, unless they represent the leading edge of a trend. In which case local efforts to facilitate entrepreneurial enterprise becomes even more critical.  

Barton is cautious in his reading of the Kauffman Foundation research. “The study seems to indicate that activity was essentially flat. And there are some good programs to help to start-up companies. There is the Enterprise Center of Johnson County (ECJC), and the UMKC Entrepreneurial program. Also the Kauffman Foundation itself has some good offerings like the Helzberg Mentoring program.”

 Barton, Cummings, and Grasis may never achieve the folk-hero status of Disney, Bloch, and Hall, and that’s likely fine with them. But the city that nurtured and sustained legends still attracts and grows great talent.