First Tuesday Founder Series with Mike Farmer
First Tuesday: Entrepreneur Speaker Series takes place on the first Tuesday of each month during the academic year. The events are hosted in Bloch Executive Hall, Room 218 from 4:00-5:30pm. The events are free and open to the public. Join us for an opener at 4:00, followed by the keynote speaker, Q&A, and networking with pizza!
Event Speakers
Mike Farmer
Assistant Teaching Professor / Entrepreneur
Mr. Farmer has an MBA in Product Development and Tech Entrepreneurship from the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a BS in Marketing from Kansas State University. Previously, Mike was an instructor for the Innovate Course at Blue Valley’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS)
Mike was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Techstars KC and Founder and CEO of Leap2, a visual search engine for consumers to curate and collaborate on content. Leap2 raised over $3M and was named as the winner of the $100,000 Rise of Rest competition and the Brad Feld Fiber House in Kansas City Startup Village. Mike has been an invited guest to the Whitehouse and has been featured in the New York Times, CNN Anderson Cooper and Forbes Magazine.
Mike has co-founded or founded 4 new ventures, raising over $12 million dollars of early-stage capital, authored or co-authored 10 patents. In 2004, Mike led in the strategic development of the Kansas Economic Growth act, a 15 year $600 million dollar technology-based economic development initiative.
Mike has worked as founder or senior manager of new technology ventures including Float-tech life jacket (New York), Kozoru search engine (Kansas City), Aristotle International campaign software (Washington DC), Etak-TeleAtlas (Silicon Valley), and Rand McNally (San Francisco).
