In March 2015, James Stapleton was preparing to put entrepreneurs through a 54-hour weekend in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. They would pitch ideas, form teams and try to turn a promising thought into something a business might be built around. The setting was Codefi, inside the old federal building on Broadway. A place accustomed to official business was being put to work on the unofficial kind: people with an idea, a laptop and considerably more questions than answers.
The offices had an open, playful feel against the building's austere surroundings. That contrast suited the undertaking. Stapleton and his fellow founders were trying to make technology entrepreneurship feel possible in a smaller city. The weekend offered a deadline, mentors and a route toward a startup competition. It also offered something harder to put on a registration form: other people who took the idea seriously.
A mechanic's son meets another mechanic's son
Stapleton comes from Lyons, Kansas. His father was a mechanic with his own business. Years later, his Codefi co-founder Chris Carnell would describe how much they recognized in each other's backgrounds. Carnell's father owned a body shop. Both had left small towns in search of opportunities in startups and technology.
Their connection developed around Southeast Missouri State University, where Stapleton taught entrepreneurship and helped Carnell launch his first technology company. They also worked on a downtown redevelopment project intended to help students start businesses. As that project moved toward arts and hospitality, their interest in teaching people how to innovate continued elsewhere.
They began with a consulting group, then visited innovation hubs around the country. The physical spaces mattered: somewhere to gather, trade knowledge and make the next introduction. Their eventual answer was Codefi. Behind the language of regional development sat a personal experience both understood. Leaving home had expanded their options. They wanted more options available to people who stayed.
The professor follows a question out of the classroom
Stapleton had started his first company at 18 and gone on to run creative and technology businesses before entering higher education. At Southeast Missouri State, he helped establish an entrepreneurship center and worked with economic development organizations. The classroom was one part of a career already moving between the practical business of running companies and the broader question of how communities produce them.
An email from a federal administrator at the Delta Regional Authority led to a meeting and a pair of questions: where do jobs come from, and which companies create good occupations? Stapleton studied business dynamics data and became convinced that young companies deserved more attention in regional job creation.
Codefi opened in November 2014. He had followed the question into a new business. Much later, asked about something he had got right, he chose marrying his wife, Stacy. Asked about a failure, he chose waiting too long to join public discussions about the barriers facing workers and entrepreneurs outside major metropolitan areas. It is a revealing pair of answers: affection at home, impatience at work.
“I nailed it when I married my wife.”
James Stapleton
Coffee, borrowed screens and a reason to show up
Even before the opening, Stapleton was explaining the value of a regular gathering. Cape Girardeau had been selected for 1 Million Cups, a program connecting entrepreneurs with mentors and potential funders. Sessions at Codefi were scheduled to begin on November 12, 2014. At the time, Cape was described as the smallest city selected for the program.
He emphasized the practical reassurance of talking with someone who had already started a business. New founders carry questions that experienced entrepreneurs can answer. Getting those people into a room together was a service in itself. The coffee helped provide a socially acceptable reason to begin.
By March 2015, Codefi had expanded to more than 5,000 square feet. There were private offices, a conference room and a game room. An open device lab, powered by AT&T, gave developers access to smartphones and tablets for testing websites and applications. This was a particularly literal way to close an opportunity gap: make the tools available.
A founder could have somewhere to work and still lack a device needed to check a product. A developer could have technical ability and still need a customer, collaborator or introduction. Stapleton's project accumulated these small, useful provisions. An incubator becomes easier to understand when you look at what someone can actually do there on a Tuesday.
Fifty thousand dollars, without surrendering a share
The 1ST50K competition gave entrepreneurs a different reason to consider Cape Girardeau. Modeled on St. Louis's Arch Grants, it offered a $50,000 grant without taking equity. In return, winners would locate their businesses in the community. Five local contributions of $10,000 each supplied the initial funding; later support came from the Missouri Technology Corporation.
The arrangement connected two interests that can easily miss each other. A young company needs money before its prospects are comfortable enough for conventional investors. A smaller city wants businesses that can grow there. The competition put a specific offer between them. The invitation had a dollar amount and an address.
Codefi's founders were participating in that same local economy. They created carGO, and the appearance of more companies brought another constraint into view: a growing technology business needs people who can do the work. Attracting founders could only take the region so far if it could not also develop its own technical workforce.
The next bottleneck was people
Codefi's early startup work made the shortage of software talent difficult to ignore. In 2016, it introduced LaunchCode's Python training program. The training addressed a problem that a coworking desk could not solve: local companies needed a larger pool of people able to build and maintain software.
The connection between education and company formation remained central. A course can help someone learn a skill; a local employer can give that skill somewhere to go. Building both sides takes more coordination than running either alone. It asks an organization to think about a learner's next step and an employer's next hire at the same time.
Partnerships supplied part of the answer. Codefi worked with universities, employers and public funders rather than trying to supply every resource itself. The regional approach joined business development with workforce development. For Stapleton, the university years and the entrepreneurial years had become parts of the same job.
In July 2023, that job took him west. Codefi announced a Springfield satellite office at efactory's Brick City 3 space, with Stapleton and Stacy relocating to help lead the expansion. The organization had already partnered with Missouri State University's efactory on Innovate SOMO. It reported raising more than $6 million from state and federal partners to support the regional effort.
Moving made his involvement tangible. Springfield would have a co-founder on the ground, building teams and working alongside partners. A regional network can sound abstract until somebody has to pack.
A fund with two ways of getting started
In 2024, Codefi and efactory introduced Innovate SOMO Funds, a $2 million pool intended for technology startups in southern Missouri's 47-county service area. The structure combined charitable contributions through a nonprofit fund with for-profit investment. Companies could receive equity or revenue-based financing.
That design acknowledged the awkwardness of the earliest stage. A startup may have an opportunity worth pursuing before it fits a conventional funding model. Combining different forms of capital was an attempt to make room for those cases. Stapleton described a region with useful technology ideas that needed help getting underway.
There was a geographic argument running through the financial one. An idea in southern Missouri should have access to a process for testing and financing it. The fund was one more piece of that process, alongside instruction, mentoring and software development support. Each addressed a different point at which a prospective company could otherwise stop.
Eleven years in, he reopened the question
At the end of 2024, Carnell stepped down to pursue other opportunities. Stapleton's May 2025 reflection marked both a leadership transition and Codefi's eleventh year. He credited the work of his co-founder while setting out the organization's next direction. A venture formed around personal relationships had reached the stage where it needed to keep working through their change.
In February 2026, Stapleton described a more uncomfortable assessment. Codefi had supported more than 60 startups and trained more than 600 people in technology skills. It reported over $60 million in follow-on capital raised by participating startups and more than $100 million in economic impact across Missouri. These were organizational results, built over a decade with colleagues and partners.
He still concluded that Codefi needed rebuilding for the next phase. His explanation drew on Jim Collins's Good to Great: examine the team, then reconsider the strategy. He wrote about setting aside his own ego. The anniversary had become an occasion to revise the operation rather than preserve every part of it.
Codefi's reported cumulative results, February 2026. Follow-on capital was raised by participating startups.
The relaunch brought together AI training, startup support, software development, organizational building programs and ecosystem partnerships. Prompt to Product offered a ten-week route from an idea to a working application for people without coding experience. Traction Studio AI connected startup methods with AI guidance and human support. The programs were offered statewide, with national offerings as well.
The address still matters
By September 2026, Stapleton was making the case for Make Missouri AI-Ready. His argument connected two concerns he kept hearing from employers: difficulty finding workers and uncertainty about artificial intelligence. He proposed training existing workers to use new tools, through partnerships that could reach communities across the state.
He called the meeting of labor constraints and accessible technology the Confluence. It was an appropriately local metaphor for a Missouri initiative. His concern was where the benefits would land, and whether workers in smaller communities would have access to the training needed to participate.
The tools have changed considerably since that 54-hour weekend in the old federal building. The question beneath them has remained recognizable. Someone has an idea, or needs a new skill, or wants to grow a company. Stapleton has spent much of his career arranging the next useful encounter: a mentor, a course, a grant, an employer. A second chance can require a surprisingly practical first step. Sometimes it starts with opening a room.