BO FISHBACK

The jury may still be out on Zaarly’s staying power as a consumer-purchasing application, but this much is certain: Founder Bo Fishback knows entrepreneurship, and how to build an investor network. Among the $30 million he’s raised for the company founded in early 2011 are contributions from Hollywood figures like Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and LeVar Burton, tech insiders and young executives from around the nation. Heck, even of Meg Whitman, of eBay/Hewlett-Packard fame, sits on the company’s board.

“It’s still unclear if we’ll pull it off or not, but it won’t be for lack of effort,” Fishback says. That spirit of determination has put this 35-year-old Harvard MBA grad on a fast track of local entrepreneurship. “The whole reason we started Zaarly was because we believed in working with people who love what they do is special,” Fishback says. “We spend our days helping small businesses in Kansas City grow, and if they are successful, we’ll be successful. That’s pretty much what gets us excited to come to work every day.” Before diving into Zaarly, Fishback was the Kauffman Foundation’s vice president for entrepreneurship and president of Kauffman Labs. He started his career at Cerner Corp., where he was director of e-health, and has also held director’s duties or advisory-consulting roles with half a dozen other ventures.

He and his wife, Shelby, have two children, Pierce, 2, and 3-month-old Merritt.

BRAD GIBBS

“I can’t remember how old I was when I decided I wanted to work in the field of marketing and advertising,” Brad Gibbs says. “I know it was at a young age, definitely before high school.” Good call: Just two years after earning a degree in communications and advertising from Fort Hays State University, Gibbs found the secret of his own success at Plattform Advertising. It was called digital marketing. At 24, he was given the keys to the car with a new business line at what had been a traditional media-placement agency, and the products he developed for clients in higher-education systems now account for 90 percent of annual revenues that are approaching $200 million.

But his motivation lies not with revenue figures or marketing technologies. “I never thought my love for advertising would bring me to something else that I am extremely passionate about—changing people’s lives,” he says. “We get to help those who don’t get a chance to go to a traditional university, like so many of us do, and the end result is so rewarding.”

He has two children, Cole, 7, and Jensen, 4, with Nickie “my wonderfully understanding wife,” he says. The 39-year-old has a seat on Plattform’s board of directors, and he serves on the membership committee of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities. He also supports Team Phil, the agency’s philanthropic wing, which benefits Ronald McDonald House, Kids TLC, Della Lamb Community Services and various other area non-profits.

MARIA FLYNN

Maybe it’s because she’s from the fifth-generation of a Kansas wheat-farming family, but Maria Flynn likes to make things grow. She’s the 38-year-old president and CEO of Orbis Biosciences, a 6-year-old Kansas City, Kan., company that serves large pharmaceutical clients and other companies dependent on controlled-release processes for drugs and other usages. Flynn was on board at Orbis almost from the start, first as vice president of business development, then as chief operating officer after just 18 months, then rising to her current role in 2011. She helped the life-sciences company shatter sector norms by attaining profitability in just three years.

Concurrent with most of that, she had two children—3-year-old Declan and 4-month-old Teddy—with her husband, Robert. Yet another branch shooting off from the Cerner Corp. entrepreneurial tree, Flynn spent five years with the health-care software giant, forming new business units or turning around ones that were under-performing. She also spent three years with Camp Dresser & McKee, designing water-treatment systems in the U.S. and abroad, and she’s a walking monument to the power of education: Bachelor’s in civil engineering from K-State, master’s in environmental engineering from Stanford, MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. An officer with the Pipeline entrepreneurial program, she was also a co-founder of Eden Renewal, a non-profit that promotes environmental stewardship among faith communities.

CHRIS GIULIANI

In 2011, Spring Venture Group co-founder and COO Jeffery Anderson recruited former colleague Chris Giuliani to help launch a subsidiary of their direct-to-consumer insurance operations. But with Giuliani’s innate ability to think strategically, increase revenue, and improve operating margins, “he was moved into the CEO position,” Anderson says. The result? A 208 percent increase in senior health product sales from 2012 to 2013, coupled with a 270 percent improvement in the life insurance product line.

“I’ve had several opportunities to have a great impact on multiple companies,” Giuliani says. These opportunities have included launching and growing four start-ups within the Spring Venture Group platform. Last year, the fast-growing company leased 28,000 square feet at Crown Center, its burgeoning staff of 100 having outgrown the offices in Leawood. The new digs will allow for planned growth that is expected to swell the payroll to 300-plus by 2017. Spring Venture Group is realizing the benefits of snagging a proven performer from the likes of Capital One, TARP Worldwide (no, it’s not related to bank bailouts), and Galderma. An MU grad with a degree in hotel-restaurant management, Giuliani also pitched for the baseball team and earned a 4.0 GPA and an MBA from Baker University. “I describe myself as a family man and a man of faith,” says the 38-year-old. He and his wife, Dara, have two girls, 8-year-old Sofia and 5-year-old Lauren.