Jeff Shackelford

Jeff Shackelford is the President & CEO of the Enterprise Center in Johnson County (ECJC), a roughly 25-year-old nonprofit that supports and funds early-stage, high-growth companies in the Kansas City region and reports having generated more than $3B in cumulative economic impact. He assumed the ECJC leadership role in July 2019. ECJC is home to Mid-America Angels — one of the Midwest's largest angel groups — where Shackelford serves as Executive Director, and it operates a suite of early-stage capital and support programs including the Growth Mentoring Service, the Women's Business Center, Women's Capital Connection, and the WE-Lend microloan fund.

Before ECJC, Shackelford was the founding Executive Director of Digital Sandbox KC, a proof-of-concept and commercialization program launched in 2012 with a U.S. Commerce Department i6 Challenge grant. Under his leadership, Digital Sandbox worked with 200+ entrepreneurs, and its portfolio companies went on to secure more than $85M in follow-on equity investment across roughly 70 companies, helping create 700+ jobs in the Kansas City area. The program partnered with regional corporates and institutions such as Sprint, Hallmark, UMB, and area universities.

Shackelford describes a career that blends Fortune 100 enterprise experience with hands-on startup and early-stage venture work, including a track record of raising more than $500M in capital across his career. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Kansas. He has been an active public voice in the KC startup ecosystem (writing and speaking on how founders can win funding) and has testified before the Kansas Legislature on entrepreneurship and economic development.

(Note: the stub listing "Senior Vice President / Angel Investors" appears to be aggregator data; his verified current titles are President & CEO of ECJC and Executive Director of Mid-America Angels.)

• Invests through Mid-America Angels, "a regional network of accredited investors dedicated to identifying and funding the most promising early stage companies in the Kansas-Missouri region" (founded 2006).
• Stage: Seed, Series A, and Series B; MAA will either lead a round or join a syndicate depending on the size of the raise.
• Check size: roughly $250K–$1.5M per deal from the group, with participation in rounds that have historically averaged ~$1–2M+.
• Sectors: technology-driven and scalable businesses — enterprise/B2B applications and SaaS, life sciences/health, fintech, and other high-tech categories.
• How they say yes: MAA "provides the structure to aggregate the knowledge, experience, and investment capital of its membership," creating a member-driven diligence process — so decisions run through a screening/diligence pipeline rather than a single check-writer.
• Through ECJC's broader programs, Shackelford's orientation is concept-to-commercialization: he favors companies that have moved past a pure idea toward market validation, prototyping, and early traction.