Startup Missouri Information to fuel Missouri business startups

For thousands of business owners who depend heavily on the dollars spent by visitors who road-trip throughout the heartland, the pandemic’s impact has completely scrambled the financial equation.

A half-year into the COVID-19 pandemic, what do experts in economics and entrepreneurship predict the next six months will bring for small businesses and startups?

With summer weather waning, how will Missouri eateries and bars keep and accommodate business when their customers no longer can count on dining and drinking al fresco?

Michelle Robinson advertises her DEMIblue Natural Nails as “seven-free” — a term indicating they lack seven key toxins she said are typically found in conventional polishes.

As founder of The Mission Center, Chris Miller knows one important thing about philanthropy. “Most people don’t go into nonprofit work because they are passionate about doing accounting,” he said. That’s why The Mission Center exists. Founded in 2010 and housed in the Cortex District of St. Louis, Miller’s brainchild specializes in outsourcing back-office operations for nonprofit organizations. That’s not ...

Galen Gondolfi doesn’t work for a traditional lender. For starters, his institution is among the few who would turn away a borrower for having too perfect a credit report. “If you come in with an 800 credit score and real estate collateral, we’re going to say, ‘We’re not the program for you,’” he said. But Gondolfi’s organization, called Justine PETERSEN, ...

Fashion icon Ralph Lauren once noted that he didn’t design clothes. “I design dreams,” he said. That may be true, but turning dreams of a new clothing startup into the tangible reality of product hanging on a shelf can be a genuine challenge — even in fashion Meccas such as New York or Los Angeles. Still, there is a small ...

When entrepreneur Rachel Kennedy ran a food truck called Plantain District, she wanted to move things to the next level but a standard restaurant wasn’t really what she was looking for. “I started thinking about a shipping container because that’s so similar to a food truck,” said Kennedy. “Just taking the mobility factor out of it made sense.” And that’s ...

The owner of any new business is likely to experience many exciting “firsts,” but one is nerve-wracking enough to give even the most resilient entrepreneur a few sleepless nights. When do you hire that first employee? “I think that every hire I made, I thought I was going to run out of money,” recalled Anne Cull, founder of ThinkViral, a ...

Technology is everywhere, and it often seems as though every entrepreneur wants to incorporate the latest gadget, platform or app into their operations. But finding the best ways to employ all of this modern-day wizardry to benefit their own operations remains a tricky challenge for many startups. A lot of companies offer solutions, but which ones are really bending the ...