Michael Curnes is a professional in Kansas City that is dedicated to bringing quality product design, marketing, and growth strategies to companies of all sizes.
Career Break - Personal Health
2022 – 2024
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Maintaining my passion for interacting and assisting startups and small business owners. I mentored participants in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Entrepreneurial Scholars program to guide their business plan development, marketing, and go-to-market strategies.
I was honored to join the Advisory Board for the newly created Design Thinking program at Missouri State University. It was a fantastic opportunity to help structure its offerings to companies of all sizes to aid in their efforts to formulate new products and services.
I continued to pursue other mentorship opportunities and was accepted to become a mentor for the Enterprise Center of Johnson County, Kansas’ Growth Mentoring Service. The GMS is a service modeled after the MIT VMS program and connects experienced entrepreneurs with a team of skilled volunteer mentors.
After moving to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Kansas City, I came across Porter House KC and volunteered as a mentor and coach for underrepresented businesses and their owners in the city’s urban core.
All of these efforts required that I keep myself current and engaged with the changes in multiple facets of business, and I’m extremely grateful to have contributed to them all.
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My major role, however, was to review and assess each of the 75 existing portfolio companies by attending board meetings and reviewing all existing data. This information was drawn from reports, press releases, and financials to create a comprehensive summary of the portfolio’s health. While it was challenging to dig into the technology and markets of such a diverse collection of ventures, I still look at it fondly as one of the most enjoyable learning opportunities I’ve had.
Synse LLC & Subi
2020-2021
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A digital city hall significantly improves accessibility and convenience, eliminating the need for residents to take time off work or rearrange their schedules to complete tasks in person. Business hours expand from the traditional 9-to-5 to 24/7 availability. However, even in this new digital landscape, some doors remain locked.
Vendors can provide cities with the front-end tools they need to serve citizens, but the back-end systems—used by departments like municipal courts, water, and public works—often remain disconnected due to a lack of integrations with existing legacy software. While vendors can build custom integrations, the software requirements vary from city to city, leading to a costly à la carte approach. These additional one-time costs place a significant financial burden on small to mid-sized cities, making full digital transformation out of reach.
Armed with a deep understanding of this problem, a strong motivation to solve it, and my background in technology, I set out to become the locksmith for the digital city hall—creating the keys that would unlock seamless integration.
Taking action came naturally. My entrepreneurial spirit was invigorated, and with my existing presence as a mentor in the UMKC E-Scholars program, I leveraged my network and community resources to add structure to Lokal’s development. Market, competitor, and product research confirmed the need for such a solution, and conversations with city managers and IT staff across more than a dozen cities in the Kansas City metro provided invaluable insights. Their input helped shape the architecture of the software and refine the technology stack—ensuring the solution would be easy to implement, perform better than standard integrations, and offer long-term viability for budget-conscious municipalities. The venture’s natural progression toward a well-defined go-to-market strategy and exit plan was deeply satisfying.
But not everything was perfect. One major obstacle stood in the way—one that has been the downfall of many solo entrepreneurs: the absence of a technical co-founder.
To move forward with prototyping and developing a minimum viable product (MVP), I needed someone to take ownership of product development and a team to build it. After months of networking, searching, and interviewing qualified candidates, I faced a harsh reality: while many developers were skilled, none were ready to leave their stable 9-to-5 roles to take the leap with me. That left me in an untenable position—balancing advocacy, sales, and development entirely on my own.
Faced with this challenge, I made the difficult but necessary decision to pause development until I could find the right partner to bring Lokal to life.
That doesn’t mean the vision is gone. I continue to research the technological and market landscape, refining the idea to keep it relevant and viable for the future. Who knows what lies ahead? One thing remains certain: my optimism.
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During my networking and digital community activities, I was introduced to a company, Subi, that was building a mobile app. The application, at its core functioned similarly to existing apps like Uber, Bumble, or Meetup, where people with specific interests or needs would be able to use their devices to find others in the area, which in this particular space, was to socialize through sports. This held a unique value proposition because in contrast to other apps that could organize sporting meetups, this was focused on the individual and their unique needs. For example, if you were traveling and found yourself wanting to play tennis in a new city, you wouldn’t have to join an existing group and hope that their weekly meetup aligned with your schedule. This was athletic socialization on your terms.
The company already had a founding team with a vision and developers but lacked crucial elements for them to succeed. Marketing and messaging that effectively communicated their mission and the unique aspects of the platform were missing. Product design and development was disorganized and lacked a roadmap as well as user research and feedback. The operations and overall structure of the company was very early-stage and that hindered their ability to gain recognition as well as the backing of outside investors.
Because it took up such a large portion of my time and resources devoted to Synse, I accepted their invitation to become their Chief Operating Officer and address all of these issues by creating a powerful message, forming partnerships with regional media companies, and overhauling the development process that altogether formed a cohesive strategy. Those efforts paid off in the form of partnerships, a sizable beta testing program, and also recognition by being awarded grant funding and recognition as the third most socially impactful startup in the state of Missouri.
When the app was ready to go live, my agreement to help them reach those milestones was achieved and I bowed out to return to my own work. Unfortunately, because the team was comprised of founders from various countries here on student visas, they were unable to remain in the U.S. and went back to their home countries. I still wonder if I had stayed on if I could of held it together. Regardless, I made many great connections through difficulties and success that are experiences I reflect on to this day.
E-Scholars - Lokal Integrations
2020 - 2021
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My responsibilities centered on helping municipal leaders embrace Digital Transformation and the notion that the best way to improve City Hall as we knew it was to move it from the city center to the palm of our hands. I sharpened my presentation skills by delivering product presentations and demonstrations, underscoring how modernized public sector services could spark innovation in local government. Onboarding civil servants through hands-on training sessions gave me a chance to build genuine connections with the people who make our cities run.
This also was a great opportunity to put my thinking cap on and get into the nitty-gritty of User-Centered Design principles as I analyzed the entire market of government website software and its use cases.
I took away from this period a renewed belief in the transformative power of combining thoughtful innovation with genuine human insight to make the world better, or at least just a little bit more convenient. Looking back, I remain grateful for the lessons learned, the relationships formed, and the positive changes facilitated in communities, large and small.
OpenCities
2018 - 2019
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.As Senior Strategist, I grew Musicorum Productions from a small production company into a global player in digital products and entertainment.