BLAKE MILLER | Think Big Partners

You might think of Blake Miller is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. After all, as a partner at Think Big Partners, he’s a vital strut in an emerging infrastructure that supports Kansas City’s fast-growing community engaged in digital derring-do. “I’m deeply passionate about helping others realize their dream of owning their own business,” says the 28-year-old Miller. “At Think Big Partners, we help entrepreneurs build companies. It’s a place where you can ‘walk in with an idea, and walk out with a company.’”

Since its founding, Think Big Partners has worked with over 400 entrepreneurs to create business and generate jobs in the Kansas City area. Miller, then, is a deeply committed disciple of the Kauffman Foundation’s message that fast-growing young companies are the key to net job creation. “Our business plan is innovative because we are providing process to an otherwise intimidating journey of starting a business,” Miller says.

BRAD CARLSON | MAG Trucks

MAG Trucks was born in 2008, when its founders were still in college, and the company immediately found its sweet spot—modifying vans for parcel delivery with clients like UPS and Federal Express. Co-founder Brad Carlson has been a very busy guy since then. In less than three years, he and his business partner, Blake Fulton, muscled their fledgling company onto the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies (at No. 81), soaring to $3.3 million in annual revenues. Since then, MAG has blossomed into vehicle financing, vehicle-relocation and transporation services and specialty-vehicle production, all through additional operating companies flying the MAG banner. A former congressional intern for Rep. Sam Graves and a one-time policy associate at the prestigious Cato Institute, Carlson brought a precocious view of capitalism to the founding of the MAG line: “The entrepreneur’s competitive drive for innovation,” he said, “has been the motive and force behind capitalist development and the good of society.”

MIKE McKEEN | Briarcliff Development

He lists serial entrepreneur Charles Garney as a mentor, so it’s a given that Mike McKeen understands the concepts of customer service, operating with integrity, and relentless pursuit of excellence. Those values, among others, have been part of McKeen’s growth as director of development and construction for Briarcliff Development Co. His role, McKeen says, demands not just an idea and the passion to pursue it, but knowledge, financial risk, leadership, energy and innovation. Those qualities in employees, he says, will set a company apart from its competition, and they were keys to bringing all of the firm’s development and construction management services in house, improving efficiency, increasing cash flow and reducing risk for the company and its clients. If there’s an emerging Mr. Northland competition, you could win a lot of money betting on this 29-year-old. He has active roles in 10 civic and philanthropic ventures and, most recently was appointed to a mayoral steering committee to study plans for the hotly debated one-terminal reconfiguration of Kansas City International Airport.

KARTHIK RAMACHANDRAN | Likarda

Lots of young business owners want to change the world, but how many really do? Well, if he realizes his vision of developing a cure for diabetes—first in animals, then perhaps in humans—Karthik Ramachandran will have done just that. Along with his former graduate adviser, Lisa Stehno-Bittel, the 27-year-old co-founded Likarda, a startup in the Bioscience & Technology Business Center incubator at the University of Kansas Medical Center. His lab work has been essential in developing cell-based technology that generates species- and tissue-specific 3D cell clusters for a variety of applications, including drug testing or transplantation as cures for diabetes in companion animals, processes that are currently undergoing clinical trials. “Being in the middle of the Kansas City animal-health corridor has really helped shape our objectives and support of vision,” Ramachandran says. “The excitement for young entrepreneurs in Kansas City is wonderful, and it’s a great place to start and grow a company.”