COLUMBIA - TechStars Startup weekend participants prepared for Sunday night's public pitch event at the EquipmentShare’s headquarters.
There are 11 teams participating in the public pitch presentation:
- Waste Not
- Goober
- Shades of Color
- Emotional Support Group
- OnlyFarms
- Rentable
- discovAR
- Hydrogen Drones
- InstaSeat
- Merdaya
- Metal Creations
Co-Chair Saskia Cairnes said teams have been going through the journey of a typical startup in a condensed timeline.
“They do everything from business modeling, to looking at customer feedback,” Cairnes said. “We really get them to be involved with the genuine process it takes to do the due diligence on a particular startup. We've had incredible mentors from the local community come in, most of whom have done the founder journey themselves, which has been great because our teams have had invaluable advice.”
Co-Chair Brett Calhoun said the weekend is important for Missourians because it helps to start businesses, which in turn, grows the state economy. For the weekend, Calhoun said he recruited participants from all over the state in the hopes of fostering a diverse and inclusive group of entrepreneurs.
Cairnes said many of the participants don’t have prior traditional entrepreneurial experience.
“We have had a really wide range of people, which has actually created a really cool environment for innovation,” Cairnes said.
Participant Mary Kruse, who is a member of the Goober team, said she felt supported and reassured by the TechStars Startup weekend team. She said this weekend brought her out of her comfort zone and exposed her to new ideas.
“I've learned, even if you're not the smartest person in the room, your character can bring value to something,” Kruse said. “And, I've never really thought about that before.”
She said this weekend was particularly inspiring because she was able to connect with other female entrepreneurs. Kruse said she was particularly impressed by Tashara Earl, who is competing on the Shades of Color team.
Tashara Earl, a serial-entrepreneur from St. Louis, said the competition was a game-changer for her.
“The scale competition has tremendously helped me to bring my idea into fruition with finding the team that actually is understanding the concept, helping to validate the problem, and then working towards figuring out the components that will help to bring it to life,” Earl said.
The winning team will receive a month of media placements from Relevance and the opportunity to participate in the Scale Accelerator program.
“We're really excited to see the final pitches and just see how this pans out,” Calhoun said.
"Startup" - Google News
February 28, 2022 at 07:00AM
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TechStars Startup weekend encourages new business growth in Missouri - KOMU 8
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