Coty Beasley

Head of Product Design & Innovation / Co-Founder at Underline

Coty Beasley is a design technologist, product leader, and co-founder of Underline, where he leads product design, innovation, and AI-driven research and development across community infrastructure systems. Based in Manhattan, Kansas, his career spans creative technology, civic product leadership, and infrastructure innovation — from building AI products with IBM Watson in 2015 to leading the first privately funded open-access fiber network in the United States. His work is unified by a commitment to democratizing access to critical systems and making technology genuinely useful for communities.

Based in Manhattan, Kansas (since 2022) · https://coty.design · LinkedIn · GitHub

Last updated: 2026-03-15

Education

Associate of Arts, Metropolitan Community College - Kansas City (MCCKC)

Computer Science (attended, did not complete), University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC)

Attended but did not complete; left to pursue a lucrative early entrepreneurial venture and was dissuaded by the program's heavy reliance on .NET.

Narrative Through-Line: Democratized Access

The most distinctive pattern across Beasley's career is a focus on democratized access to critical systems and tools.

Prophetic vision: In a 2014 Silicon Prairie News profile, when asked what company he would build if money were no object, Beasley answered: 'developing infrastructure for cheap, available Internet access worldwide' — a near-literal description of Underline, which he would co-found five years later.

Current Role: Underline

Underline is the nation's intelligent community infrastructure platform — it designs, finances, constructs, and operates open-access fiber-optic networks that allow multiple ISPs to share a single physical infrastructure, giving consumers genuine choice of broadband provider. This model was common in Europe but represented a genuine first-mover position in the U.S. market at founding.

Current Scope

Major Milestones

Investors & Partners

Expertise Domains

Product Design & UX Strategy
Two decades of product and design leadership across fintech, civic tech, enterprise, and infrastructure (Evidence: Neighborly, Underline, NAIC, Epiq Systems)
AI / Cognitive Computing Product Work
Building AI-powered products since 2015 with IBM Watson partnership; now leads AI innovation and R&D at Underline (Evidence: Edge Up Sports × IBM Watson (2015), current Underline R&D role)
Open-Access Network Product Systems
Designed and leads product for the first privately funded open-access fiber network in the U.S. (Evidence: Underline co-founder, $100M Colorado Springs deployment)
GIS & Spatial Data
Early career in digital cartography with continued spatial data platform expertise (Evidence: Nova Blue Digital Cartographer, QGIS, Mapbox, Vetro expertise)
Design Systems & Design Tokens
Design token architecture (DTCG-aligned), color science (OKLCH), semantic control through canonical rules and schemas (Evidence: Current projects, design infrastructure architecture)
Civic Tech / Fintech
VP of Product at venture-backed civic fintech; co-founder of community infrastructure platform (Evidence: Neighborly ($25M Series A, Cambridge municipal bond), Underline)
Hardware / Robotics Product Development
Hardware startup experience with robotically stabilized camera systems (Evidence: CandyCam Multimedia Robotics (co-founder, CDO))
Context Engineering
Expert in how AI systems understand and process information — RAG architecture, prompt engineering, structured data for machine interpretability (Evidence: Current AI/LLM work, RAG architecture, structured data strategy)
Infrastructure & Telecommunications
Co-founder building physical infrastructure — fiber optic networks serving communities across the U.S. (Evidence: Underline open-access fiber networks, community broadband)
Community Organizing & Civic Leadership
Founded design community organizations, active in civic and professional associations (Evidence: Functional Kansas City founder, AIGA KC, Rotary Club of Manhattan)

Differentiators

Core capability: Semantic control — defining canonical rules, schemas, contracts, and interface specifications that prevent complex multi-party products from fracturing into contradiction.

Rare Combination

Career Timeline

Early Creative Technologist (2007–2013)

Multi-threaded work pattern demonstrating early capacity for systems thinking across spatial data, AV production, and web development — skills that would later converge in infrastructure product work.

CandyCam Multimedia Robotics (2012–2013)

Hardware startup incubated at Think Big Partners in Kansas City's Crossroads arts district. Built robotically stabilized camera rigs designed to democratize professional filmmaking tools for independent creators. Featured in 'Startups: Made in Kansas City' video series.

Hackathon Recognition & Community Leadership (2012–2014)

Enterprise UX (2013–2016)

Provided experience in complex data environments and enterprise product constraints that would inform later infrastructure work.

Edge Up Sports & IBM Watson (2015–2017)

Kansas City mobile app startup built on IBM Watson's cognitive computing platform. Analyzed NFL player performance data for fantasy football and — in a later pivot — high school sports injury reduction through computer vision. Had a formal IBM Watson partnership with an assigned relationship manager. Ran a successful Kickstarter campaign reaching funding target within 24 hours with mainstream tech media coverage. Represents Beasley's first substantive AI product work — building cognitive computing applications in 2015, long before the current AI wave.

Mode3 / Damascus Edge (2016–2017)

Neighborly: Civic Fintech at Venture Scale (2017–2019)

San Francisco/Kansas City fintech startup founded in 2012 with the mission of democratizing municipal bond investing — building a retail marketplace for the $400 billion/year municipal bond market.

Investors: Formation 8 (seed investor), Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher's fund), Organizations connected to Laurene Powell Jobs, Bee Partners (led $25 million Series A)

Key milestone: In February 2017, Neighborly underwrote a $2 million municipal bond for Cambridge, Massachusetts (home of Harvard and MIT), selling it in $1,000 lots directly to residents — the first transaction of its kind.

Underline: Co-Founder & Infrastructure Innovator (2019–present)

Investors: Ares Management (strategic investment, first digital infrastructure investment), FinTech Collective, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund (Steve Case's fund), Quanta Services / Mears Group, Fujitsu, Duraline

Geographic Journey

Speaking Topics

Professional Affiliations

Published Work

Topics: Digital divide, Smart city infrastructure, Artificial intelligence, The Singularity, Bandwidth and latency, Brand design and strategy

Published author on topics including the digital divide, smart city infrastructure, artificial intelligence, internet infrastructure, and brand design. Work at Underline positions him at the intersection of community infrastructure, broadband policy, and AI-driven systems.

Bylined Articles

Press Coverage & Third-Party Validation

Contact & Discovery