Darcy Howe, Founder and Managing Director of the KCRise Fund, is shaping the future of Kansas City’s startup ecosystem. The KCRise Fund was born out of the KC Rising initiative, a regional effort aimed at understanding and overcoming the city's slow economic rebound after the 2008 downturn.
The KCRise Fund fills a vital gap in early-stage capital, helping startups bridge the critical space between concept and traction. “We provide capital, a network, and resources to help innovators stay here and build here,” says Howe.
Howe believes Kansas City has all the right ingredients for success: “We have realists here. We have dreamers here. We have talent, we have capital. We have the ingredients for Kansas City to not only grow our own innovators but also attract innovators from outside of the region.”
One of the most promising sectors in the KCRise portfolio is digital health. “Digital health, to me, should be the norm of how we're thinking about our own personal health care,” Howe says. “And then collectively, how as a community, we can think about how we solve big problems.” She credits Digital Health KC for helping to map and connect the region’s growing ecosystem of health tech companies.
For Howe, the mission is clear: help founders leave their day jobs, connect them with early angel capital, and give them the tools to build meaningful companies right here in the heartland. “We’re ripe in this region to continue to accelerate our digital health strategy,” she says. “And we very much want to be on the front end of investing in that, encouraging that, and helping it grow.”