Tax service wins Missouri Startup Weekend as entrepreneurs embrace ‘building great stuff’

Beach said he had been toiling with this idea for several years, but Startup Weekend gave him a chance to bring it to life.

“This will help business owners manage a very complex and error-prone area of tax that they don’t have the ability to outsource, especially locally,” Beach said.

The event, which ran from Friday through Sunday at EquipmentShare headquarters in Columbia, featured 11 teams. Those teams formed around business ideas pitched Friday evening, and they spent the next two days building on those ideas. On Sunday afternoon, they presented to a panel of judges, competing for the first-place prize of $15,000 and other benefits to help them continue working on their startup ideas.

The teams were judged on criteria from three different categories: customer validation, execution and design, and overall business model.

Each team had to condense a weekend of work into a five-minute pitch to try and sell the judges on its idea.

Teams presented a wide range of startup ideas, several of which were trying to tackle problems through the use of artificial intelligence tools. One aimed to help small businesses reach more clientele through emails. Another sought to make voters more aware of where politicians’ funding is coming from.

Music Den took second in the competition. The startup idea is focused on creating physical locations where people can rent rooms to practice musical instruments.

During its pitch Sunday, the Music Den team said it was in the process of opening its first location in Columbia.

Even Startup Weekend participants whose teams did not place said they were leaving the competition with something.

“Just the experience of trying to start something,” said Isaiah Pani, a team member of Sincerely, which pitched an AI tool aimed at helping small businesses expand their clientele over email. “We failed a lot, and you’re going to learn so much more from that. … We are able to make something good at the end because of those failures.”

The event gave individuals a chance to compete against one another and interact with entrepreneurs from a variety of industries.

“Being able to network here is incredible,” said Kamber Hawkins, a University of Missouri student and co-founder of RoomU, an application meant to help college students find compatible roommates. “There’s not a whole lot of opportunity, especially when you’re young, like we are in college, to network with entrepreneurs who are successful.”

Beach and Edelman, the SolvTax co-founders, jokingly said Sunday their next step was to catch up on some sleep. But they added that they want to continue progressing with their startup, specifically by making the interface more automated.

The winners praised the overall atmosphere of the event.

“You build great stuff when you’re around great people who are also building great stuff,” Edelman said. “So just to be a part of the community is fantastic.”