Prairie Portraits is a weekly set of questions intended to help the community get to know someone from the Silicon Prairie startup scene a little bit better. Prairie Portraits feature a fixed set of questions ranging from career background and personal perferences to, perhaps, off-the-wall questions on YouTube videos and entrance music.
Name: Kristopher Fassler
Title/Occupation: Operations director at Vault Coworking, events producer at Seed Here Studio and entrepreneur
Age: 34
Hometown: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Current city: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Twitter: krisfassler
Personal
Title of my autobiography: “Living with Purpose”
Thing I can’t live without: My MacBook Pro
Drink of choice: XS Energy
Last book I read: “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” by Gary Vaynerchuk
Ultimate road trip snack: Monster cookies
Entrance song if I was a wrestler: “Showstopper” by TobyMac
Celebrity doppelgänger: John Cusack
Guilty pleasure band: Royal Tailor
Chosen career in an alternate reality: A music composer for movie scores
Worst OCD tendency: Not sure if this counts but, always being in a hurry when driving.
Quote I might have said: “It’s like one point five and a half billion!”
Which actor or actress, and why: Robert Downey Jr. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist”—wait, that’s Tony Stark, but that seems fitting.
Favorite YouTube video: Any fail/win compilation.
Thanks to our sponsor
Local
Best place in Cedar Rapids no one knows about: The “Faces of Freedom” exhibit at the National Czech and Slovak Museum
One thing Cedar Rapids has that other Silicon Prairie cities don’t: Easy access to a network of connected people at all levels.
Best thing going for Cedar Rapids’ startup community: Excitement and buy-in from the whole community—entrepreneurs, city and local government, and economic developers.
Last local restaurant I ate at: Cobble Hill
Best meal I’ve had in Cedar Rapids: Southwest grilled chicken with corn salsa, sweet potato, and corn bread—at my parent’s house. Dad’s a great cook!
Cedar Rapids would be better if… it had a 40-acre lake on the south end of 3rd Avenue in the NewBo district!
The Startup Scene
Social media pet peeve: #Hashtagging #an #entire #sentence
App I’m obsessed with: Sleep Time and Spotify
Silicon Prairie startup crush: Clusterflunk
Most comfortable startup T-shirt I own: Not a startup, but RAYGUN’s “Iowa, Wave The Next Time You Fly Over” T-shirt.
Something most people don’t know about me: I like to make stuff with my hands and I’m fairly artistic.
Entrepreneur I most want to grab a drink with: The late Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr.
I do what I do because… I’m a little crazy and I love adventure and building stuff.
Before I was in startups… I was in sales and logistics.
If money wasn’t an object, my next company would be… focused on helping others succeed in business and in life.
The Silicon Prairie startup scene is missing… more density of startups and investors, and a big exit.
In five years, I’ll… take a vacation.
In five years, the Silicon Prairie… will be the place to build a startup and where people move to, instead of from!
Credits: Photos courtesy of Kris Fassler.
