kansas-city
(15)
DMH and the Website That Wasn't a Website Problem
The Kansas City agency makes websites, campaigns and brands. Its more interesting product is the moment a client realizes it asked for the wrong thing.
The Ad Agency That Put Feelings Ahead of Facts
Signal Theory spent half a century learning that people rarely buy for the reasons they recite. Its answer is an agency built to find the emotional signal hiding underneath the sensible explanation.
The Agency That Bought Seven Companies - and Let Them Keep Their Names
Trozzolo began with newsletters, grew through seven acquisitions, and discovered that the cleverest way to build one agency may be to preserve several. Its bet is simple: diagnose the business problem first, then decide which kind of communication deserves to exist.
The 50-Year Argument for Staying Small
Fasone & Partners has spent half a century resisting the usual agency instinct to get bigger. Its wager is simple: fewer layers, longer relationships, and an idea sharp enough to make a modest media budget behave like a large one.
The Caterer Who Learned to Speak Wall Street
Marie Swift built a national agency by mastering one small, difficult language: how financial advisers earn trust. Three decades later, its best marketing lesson is still the least glamorous one - know the business before you reach for the megaphone.
The Five-Minute Window: How Parris Communications Learned to Work at the Speed of a Crisis
A Kansas City firm that began in a converted carport now advises leaders when the clock is moving fastest. Its real product is not publicity. It is judgment under pressure.
The Marketing Problem That Wasn’t a Marketing Problem
Square Peg built an agency around a useful heresy: more marketing will not rescue a business that cannot explain itself. Its own breakthrough came when founder Kim Kramer applied that lesson to the company she was leading.
The Small Agency Built for Four Hundred Front Doors
Sandlot & Co. began in a beige basement. Now its small Kansas City team manages the unruly problem of making one brand feel local across more than 400 locations.
The Herd Book That Learned to Read DNA
For 154 years, the American Shorthorn Association has sold something cattle breeders cannot inspect in a show ring: confidence in what an animal is, where it came from, and what it may pass on.
The Marketing Department That Refused to Stay Outside
Crux KC found a lucrative space between the expensive executive and the disconnected agency: put the strategist inside the room, then bring the whole department with them.
The Insurance Broker That Turned Itself Into an API
Born inside the world's largest independent broker, Mylo spent a decade turning insurance advice into software other companies can plug in. Here is how a Kansas City team quietly became the insurance layer behind small-business platforms.
The 66-Year-Old Radio Company Betting Your Cell Phone Will Fail You
Cell towers go down in storms. Midland Radio has spent 66 years selling the backup - and turned a fading CB brand into the default radio for Jeep trails, farm fields, and emergency closets.
The Quiet Holding Company Behind America's Walls, Ceilings and Firewalls
A private, people-first investment firm in suburban Kansas City has spent two decades assembling a coast-to-coast family of specialty construction companies - and betting that patient ownership beats the quick flip.
Rebulk
Rebulk is a Y Combinator (S25) startup that measures and monitors bulk inventory - feed, sand, grain, logs, biomass and other materials that never fit into boxes or barcodes. Using fixed cameras, drones, LiDAR and computer vision, Rebulk stitches 2D imagery into 3D volumetric models to give industrial teams precise, repeatable volume and weight data instead of rough estimates and manual checks. Founded in Olathe, Kansas by Warren Wang and Cole Robertson, the company pivoted from video transcription (as dScribe AI) to bulk inventory tracking and now runs pilots with partners including Cargill and Charm Industrial.
Lead Bank
Lead Bank is a state-chartered, FDIC-insured commercial bank turned API-first Banking-as-a-Service platform. Acquired in 2022 by an investor group led by former Square Capital chief Jackie Reses, the 1928-vintage Missouri community bank now provides regulated banking infrastructure - payments, card issuing, lending, and deposit accounts - to fintechs, consumer brands, and digital-asset companies.