Funding

Healium team at the NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) Pitch Day

Healium wins $50K in NFL pitch competition with play for pro athlete’s brain, heart health

By Tommy Felts / May 2, 2022

Patrick Mahomes is no longer Missouri’s only MVP in the eyes of the NFL. The organization’s player’s association just crowned a Columbia-based startup the $50,000 winner of its annual pitch contest.  In late April, NFLPA Pitch Day brought six diverse-led startups to Las Vegas to compete for prizes in its annual contest. Among them was…

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Jackie Nguyen, founder and owner of Cafe Cà Phê, and her team accept first-place honors in the James and Rae Block Kansas City Startup Awards at the Regnier Venture Creation Challenge

UMKC pitch contest puts Cafe Cà Phê closer to Jackie Nguyen’s big goal; winners range from students to emerging startups

By Tommy Felts / April 30, 2022

The University of Missouri-Kansas City continues to brew innovation — and the return of its Regnier Venture Creation Challenge (RVCC) Friday poured proof, offering more than $88,000 in critical cash prizes to percolating ventures that spill far beyond its classrooms.  “I moved to Kansas City from Washington D.C. over the summer and I started following Cafe…

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Satya Mishra and Raj Singh, co-founders of WayLit

Missouri startup wants to make it easier for HR to fill tech gap with foreign nationals; its immigration management software just got funded

By Tommy Felts / April 26, 2022

Startland News’ Startup Road Trip series explores innovative and uncommon ideas finding success in rural America and Midwestern startup hubs outside the Kansas City metro. This series is possible thanks to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which leads a collaborative, nationwide effort to identify and remove large and small barriers to new business creation. ST.…

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Jackie Nguyen, Cafe Cà Phê; Jill and Justin Bertelsen, Bertelsen Education and Crib Coaching; and Risa Stein, SeeInMe

UMKC’s pitch competition showcases ‘real people’ solving real problems with $88K up for grabs

By Tommy Felts / April 25, 2022

Seven ventures remain in a popular regional business challenge that culminates this week with $88,000 in prizes on the line. Many of the competitors: no strangers to the pitch stage. Finalist presentations in the Regnier Venture Creation Challenge are planned for in-person Friday afternoon, followed by an awards ceremony at the UMKC Bloch Executive Hall.…

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Sean McIntosh, Foothold Labs

His portable lab can detect COVID in saliva within minutes; how this former Navy SEAL’s startup is expanding its target

By Tommy Felts / April 13, 2022

Foothold Labs is on a mission to develop a next-generation, portable diagnostics system that can not only rapidly detect infectious diseases in saliva within five-to-eight minutes, but also indicate deadly contaminants in other common substances, shared Sean McIntosh. “To get equivalent results to our technology, someone would need to submit a sample to a professional…

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