Editor’s note: Startland News editors selected 10 high-growth, scaling Kansas City companies to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch project. Now in its 11th year, this feature recognizes founders and startups that editors believe will make some of the biggest, most compelling news in the coming 12 months. The following is one of 2026’s picks.
Click here to view the full list of Startups to Watch and see how the companies (including this one) were selected.
Communicating with local government officials should be simple for constituents, Mitch Mabrey shared, even if they don’t understand how government works.
That’s why Mabrey — an exited cleantech founder — and his wife, Julie, launched Resonus, a political information platform designed to effortlessly connect users to local government by curating targeted conversations with officials and neighbors about the topics they care about most.
“We want to make communicating with local government as simple as possible for residents. They can send a text messaging or chat via the city’s website to ask questions or make suggestions,” he explained. “There is nothing to download and no esoteric menus to navigate. They can also submit service requests or participate in surveys the city sends out. Our surveys pioneer an AI enabled interview style that’s faster and easier for residents while delivering more impactful data to officials.”
Launched in 2024 initially as a tool to help people know more about down-ballot candidates in the primaries, Mabrey pivoted to working on Resonus’ Conversations platform after additional research. The platform gained traction in spring 2025 during a successful pilot with the city of Liberty, Missouri, gathering information around parks improvements.
Elevator pitch: Resonus allows users to talk with their local government to share ideas, weigh in on others’ ideas, learn how local government works, and see results via personalize text message or web chat conversations. It also helps local officials confidently make data-informed decisions.
- Founders: Mitch Mabrey, Julie Mabrey
- Headquarters: Kansas City, Missouri
- Founding year: 2024
- Current employee count: 7
- Funding amount raised to date: $32,000 non-dilutive, bootstrapped
- Noteworthy programs: Digital Sandbox KC, Pure Pitch Rally
The startup also received funding — and connections — from Digital Sandbox KC and Pure Pitch Rally.
Julie Mabrey, co-founder of Resonus, pitches her startup in October 2025 at the Pure Pitch Rally; photo by Nikki Overfelt Chifalu, Startland News
“Pure Pitch Rally actually was one of the best things locally for us,” Mabrey said. “It has helped to open some additional doors and to some opportunities with local school districts, as well as some major local cities. And we’ve also been in talks with regional organizations.”
“The exposure was excellent in terms of follow up from the different ‘land sharks’ [spot-cash investors at Pure Pitch Rally] that supported us and have met with us since then,” he added.
Momentum extended nationally when Resonus landed a pilot with the planning and zoning department for Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, after Mabrey attended the Smart Cities conference. The pilot will launch in early 2026 with a redesign of the Conversations platform’s survey function, Mabrey noted, which will ask specific questions in specific orders and make it feel like a fluid human conversation instead of talking to a robot or filling out a form.
“There’s always a risk that you’re hearing a few loud voices,” he explained. “That’s one of the things that we’re trying to avoid. So we ask the same sort of in-depth questions that you do in a focus group. It looks a little bit like a choose-your-own-adventure survey. As you start to ask questions, the user doesn’t know this, but depending on their answer, we’re going to ask them something else and follow down a different line of inquiry.”
“Then we always are able to — ever since the first pilot with Liberty — we’ve always been able to ask a reason why people prefer one thing over another,” he added, “and then summarize that nuance for the local government.”
Mitch and Julie Mabrey, co-founders of Resonus; courtesy photo
Going into 2026, Mabrey is excited to build on the conversations he started over the previous 12 months, he noted.
“We participated in eight conferences over the course of the fall, really targeting Kansas and Missouri,” he explained. “But we also went to national conferences in Florida and California that were with both the National City and County Manager Associations, the administrative professionals who run cities and counties. And then one of the ones we went to in California is a coalition of IT professionals and innovation professionals in local government who are interested in deploying AI in their jurisdictions. So it’s a very targeted group.”
The Resonus team also aims to make connections with other local civic organizations who might be interested in using its technology for a specific purpose, Mabrey noted. He teased the goal of the technology making it possible for constituents to communicate with government officials wherever they are, even if they don’t live there.
“If you were on Southwest Boulevard and you didn’t know if you’d stepped across the line between Missouri and Kansas,” he explained, “you could be talking to the Unified Government or to KCMO, or to Jackson County or to Wyandotte County. And you’d get the same experience. So that’s what we’d like to have in place eventually.”
10 Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2026
- Authentiya puts ethical AI to the test as students embrace controversial classroom tech
- CarePilot prescribes more patient time, fewer clicks for doctors as product line grows
- Cyphra Autonomy pairs robotics with heavy labor (and a light lift for job site users)
- dScribe tracks early momentum with West Coast-Midwest funding combinator
- The Good Game connects young athletes with on-demand sports experts
- LAN Party gains steam with nostalgia as a hook, gaming enterprise potential as the real play
- LODAS Markets unlocks liquidity as timing pays off for founder’s investment
- Roz uncovers dynamic momentum amid audit of its own shifting opportunities
- Sova Dating builds emotional matches with vibes, logistics and an unexpected viral moment
