8 years ago I turned a historic building in downtown Kansas City into Hive  Coworking, now Kansas City’s top coworking space by most metrics. Before Hive, I bootstrapped a full‑service marketing agency that handled everything from one-off graphic design projects to six‑figure PPC budgets, then walked away after a clean exit and a lot of lessons learned.

Hive was my answer to the city’s thin coworking scene, and it pushed me down two new rabbit holes: Deskie, the all‑in‑one software we built to keep spaces like Hive going, and Incubate KC, a grass‑roots initiative giving local founders actual resources instead of hollow advice - which then inspired Bootstrap 101, a national follow‑up designed to be a spam‑free refuge for entrepreneurs everywhere.