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 preferences to, perhaps, off-the-wall questions on YouTube videos and entrance music.
Name: Coty Beasley
Title/Occupation: UX architect
Age: 25
Hometown: Independence, Missouri
Current city: Kansas City, Missouri
Twitter: @beacrea
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Personal
Title of my autobiography: “Eat, Design, Code”
Thing I can’t live without: Whiteboards
Drink of choice: Virgil’s Rootbeer
Last book I read: Paul Boag’s “Digital Adaptation”
Ultimate road trip snack: Beef jerky
Entrance song if I was a wrestler: “The Holy Avenger” by Kraddy
Celebrity doppelgänger: Alton Brown
Guilty pleasure band and/or film: Big Fish
Chosen career in an alternate reality: Robotic overlord
Worst OCD tendency: Fixing picture frames
Quote I might have said: “Don’t be so easily defined.”
Which actor or actress, and why: Tom Hanks, because the movies he chooses to act in always challenge my perspectives.
Favorite YouTube video: Unfortunately…
Local
Best place in Kansas City no one knows about: Pandolfi’s Deli
KC’s obligatory tourist stop: Union Station
One thing KC has that other Silicon Prairie cities don’t: The Kauffman Foundation
Best thing going for KC’s startup community: Potential
Last local restaurant I ate at: Grinders
Best meal I’ve had in KC: BRGR Roadhouse
KC would be better if… Higher entrepreneurial urban density
The Startup Scene
Social media pet peeve: Improper spelling/grammar
App I’m obsessed with: Flipboard
Silicon Prairie startup crush: Cremalab
Most comfortable startup T-shirt I own: “Maker’s Gotta Make” from the Jarboe Initiative
Something most people don’t know about me: My mom raised me as a single mother while going to med school.
Entrepreneur I most want to grab a drink with: Micah Baldwin
I do what I do because… I’d be wasting my life if I didn’t.
Before I was in startups… I was pre-training.
If money wasn’t an object, my next company would be… developing infrastructure for cheap, available Internet access worldwide.
The Silicon Prairie startup scene is missing… moonshot investors.
In five years, I’ll… be making more of a global impact.
In five years, the Silicon Prairie… will be more tightly integrated.
Credits: Photos courtesy of Coty Beasley.
