In 2018, Dr. Shelley Cooper noticed {that a} clinic she was working with was experiencing a excessive price of no-shows for appointments. That very same yr, her father died in his sleep. He had medical points however wasn’t in a position to guide appointments with docs as shortly as he wanted them.

A yr later, Cooper channeled grief and frustration into motion. She started creating Come On Now, an app designed to scale back the inefficiency and waste of no-shows and canceled appointments within the rising subject of telehealth.

“I used to be considering of my coaching in telehealth implementation. What about individuals who have persistent ailments who must see the docs sooner?” Cooper stated. “And there are all these no-show empty slots, and the sufferers aren’t receiving the care they want. And we have to use telehealth extra incessantly. I put all three collectively and got here up with the product.”

Come On Now, previously often called SureShow, is presently in beta testing with about 250 customers.

By means of the app, sufferers and practitioners obtain notifications about upcoming appointments. Sufferers are in a position to schedule and regulate appointments in accordance with the scheduling guidelines of the practitioner’s workplace, slightly than by contacting the workplace.

“That manner, they’re extra prone to have that reference to the physician based mostly on what they want and what the clinic wants,” Cooper stated.

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Cooper is one in every of many entrepreneurs to have launched a enterprise inside the final 5 years in Kansas Metropolis, the place entrepreneurship is rising quickly. Between 2017 and 2021, first-time employers created 86,761 jobs, accounting for 63 % of all new jobs and about 8 % of the entire employment in Kansas Metropolis, in accordance with the KCSourceLink We Create Jobs report.

And as Kansas Metropolis startups proceed to develop, many founders of colour are in a position to efficiently launch their companies, despite prevailing biases inside funding.

“In Kansas Metropolis, quite a lot of it must do with the energy of the assets that help entrepreneurship, beginning companies and transferring companies ahead,” stated Michael Carmona, senior director of KCSourceLink, part of the UMKC Innovation Heart that connects entrepreneurs to the accessible assets in Kansas Metropolis that they should begin, develop or speed up their enterprise.

Organizations like Kansas Metropolis GIFT, Digital Sandbox KC, Scale UP KC and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Basis present entrepreneurs with assets and funding they should get their companies off the bottom.

“We’ve got quite a lot of programming. We’ve seen quite a lot of grants which have helped get of us began rising after which … you do see job creation as these people of their companies are advancing,” Carmona stated.

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Startups on the rise

One of many greatest contributing components to the rise in startups is the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, the nationwide unemployment price reached its peak of 14.7 %, the best price within the historical past of information courting again to January 1948, in accordance with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Missouri, unemployment reached its peak of 12.5 % on the identical time.

“As individuals misplaced jobs, they appeared to entrepreneurship as a workforce alternative for them, after which furthering these companies to make use of others,” stated Carmona.

KCSourceLink estimates that there have been 8,197 startup firms within the space in 2021. In that yr alone, Kansas Metropolis startups created greater than 19,000 jobs, a rise of twenty-two % from the earlier yr.

The tech sector specifically noticed main progress, with a 92 % improve within the variety of jobs created between 2020 and 2021. KC tech startups created 8,387 jobs over the previous 5 years.

Well being care and social help noticed the second largest quantity of job creation in 2021.

Along with her app sitting on the intersection of well being and know-how, Cooper believes a lot of the expansion might be attributed to the huge want for improved know-how and infrastructure on account of inefficient strategies and processes inside well being care.

“There’s so many alternative ways in which the well being care business might be improved,” she stated. “And most of these methods are associated to know-how. A few of them are associated to procedures. However for probably the most half, it’s associated to how well being care interacts with the affected person. How is it carried out on the facet of the clinician? And the way is the knowledge transferred from the situation to the affected person?”

Want for numerous funding

Because the variety of startups in Kansas Metropolis and elsewhere continues to develop, initiatives are looking for to rectify demographic inequities within the entrepreneurial house.

Whereas 77 % of enterprise capital funds go to firms with white founders, lower than 10 % of VC {dollars} go to girls founders, in accordance with Forbes. The quantity of enterprise capital channeled to Black founders is lower than 1 %.

“One of many challenges for founders of colour is funding, entry to capital,” stated Yinka Faleti, a companion with Ascend Enterprise Capital, a micro VC agency based mostly in St. Louis.

“It may possibly make a distinction between an organization going from the subsequent stage to an organization going out of enterprise if they can’t entry capital. And plenty of instances, within the case of founders of colour, the corporate was not even in a position to launch to start with in any respect. And so we discover that many brilliant concepts, many good founders or good firms, simply die on the vine,” he stated.

Ascend rejects lots of the prevailing ideas and practices of enterprise capital corporations, resembling solely investing in firms steered by colleagues and different main traders.

“Counting on that as your principal deal sourcing leads you to put money into the identical sort of issues,” stated Dan Conner, founder and basic companion at Ascend. “When you make investments like everybody else, you form of run afoul of the final idea of enterprise capital, which is on the lookout for contrarian alternatives which can be ignored.”

Traders usually analyze an organization’s founder as step one of their choice course of and search for previous successes, Conner added.

“And when you consider it, that doesn’t actually observe with something steeped in actuality,” he stated. “At any given time any repeat founder was a first-time founder themselves. So solely going for repeat founders implies that you’ll self-select out of these transformational alternatives within the first place. It additionally introduces various biases that, unknowingly, are proliferating within the enterprise capital business.” In 2022, Ascend launched an “alternative fund” to offer $25 million of enterprise capital  funding to entrepreneurs from numerous communities. Purposes are open to entrepreneurs in Missouri and all through the nation.

‘I simply want to maneuver my very own enterprise ahead’

Shelley Cooper is aware of all concerning the challenges. In her journey to obtain funding for Come On Now, she has shared the mission of her platform numerous instances. Regardless of the paying prospects she’s gathered, she has confronted many setbacks and rejections that she attributes to the startup world’s implicit bias in opposition to individuals of colour and ladies.

“So after I strategy totally different funders, I get the ‘We have to see extra traction,’ she stated. “And, ‘What number of extra prospects do you could have?’ And, ‘We have to see extra product market match.’ And I get that that’s actually vital, however I’ve spoken with different founders who usually are not BIPOC, and never girls, and so they may just about have an concept and so they’ve acquired funding falling of their lap.”

To this point, Cooper has financed her enterprise with capital from varied sources, together with microgrants, pitch competitors awards, assist from household and associates and a small-business mortgage. She is ready to develop her enterprise extra earlier than looking for enterprise capital funding.

Based on Crunchbase knowledge, Black entrepreneurs within the U.S. obtained almost $1.8 billion in startup and enterprise funding by way of the primary half of 2021. That quantities to just one.2 % of the $147 billion invested in all U.S. startups all through that point.

Cooper stated she has been shocked to see a few of the funding alternatives secured extra simply by white entrepreneurs.

“It’s laborious to rely what number of founders are speaking concerning the funding that they’ve had by way of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, and so they didn’t have half of what we had, what they had been doing was not saving lives,” she stated.

“And so I discover it obscure how that occurs. However I can’t think about that, I simply want to maneuver my very own enterprise ahead.”

Come On Now has moved its goal market from hospitals to federally certified well being facilities that serve underserved populations and are funded by the federal authorities, resembling Swope Well being.

“That runs together with the mission that the corporate has of serving the underserved and bringing well being care to of us that don’t ordinarily have it,” Cooper stated, “and having that continuity of take care of the medically fragile sufferers.”

Mili Mansaray is the housing and labor reporter at The Kansas Metropolis Beacon.