Built in Kansas City.
Staying in Kansas City.

I spent years on the front lines at Cerner, Epic, and the VA. Healthcare IT is hard, meaningful work. I watched the people doing that work — the ones who actually kept systems running and patients safe — earn a fraction of what the executives pulling levers at the top made. The ratio was not 3x or 5x. It was 500x. That did something to me. Not bitterness exactly. More like a decision.

Every company I build runs on what I call the 10x rule. The highest-paid person in the building will never earn more than 10 times what the lowest-paid person earns. That is not idealism. That is what a company looks like when the people building it share in what they are building.

I also do not believe your job should be your identity. We run a 32-hour full-time work week across all my companies, remote-first by default. Not because we work less. Because focused, rested people build better things. Burnout is not a badge. It is a business failure.

MIST is being built in Kansas City. So are my other companies. I am not leaving. KC is at an inflection point and I want to be part of what comes next here, not in San Francisco. The midwest has been exporting its talent for decades. I am done with that.

We hire, welcome, and celebrate everyone. Full stop. You be you. That is not a policy here. It is just how we operate.

I want to build companies that build communities. I want to look back in ten years at a group of people in Kansas City who built something real, got paid fairly for it, had time for their lives, and did it without turning into the thing we were running from. That is what this is.