Photo Source: The Kansas City Startup Village
Earlier this month, The Economist stopped by Kansas City and the Kansas City Startup Village (KCSV) to film for its upcoming international documentary about the mobile app economy. The documentary hopes to highlight the mobile app economy’s future and its impact on economic and business growth worldwide. Kansas City will be featured alongside two other cities: Helsinki and Beijing.
The KCSV was formed in late 2012 and aims to support entrepreneurs and startups in their company creation and growth. Matthew Marcus, a co-leader of KCSV, was interviewed for the documentary. Marcus recently told the Kansas City Business Journal, “It still amazes me the number of people, who literally around the world, decide to come and visit Kansas City and specifically drop into the village.
Google Fiber’s headquarters based in Kansas City helped garner the attention of The Economist. In addition to the Kansas City Startup Village, the documentary will also feature interviews from Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James, CEO of PlanIT Dominique Davison and former Kansas City, Kan. Mayor Joe Reardon.
In an article written by the Kansas City Business Journal, Sunmin Kim, the deputy technology editor at London-based The Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist newspaper, says, “As America’s first gigabit city, Kansas City for us was an interesting case study in not only how connectivity can rapidly transform a city, but also how instrumental key individuals are in getting buy-in from the city’s residents and businesses.”
The documentary will debut on Jan. 21, 2015, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland and later will be available online.
More about the KCSV: The KCSV is an entrepreneur-led, grassroots initiative helping to bolster the Kansas City startup scene by creating a concentrated and collaborative community of startups. It hopes to establish KCSV as a hub of the greater Kansas City startup community and serve as an example and resource for other startup communities.
To read more on The Economist’s visit to Kansas City check out the Kansas City Business Journal.
