MOSW Winners Recap

Maria Heyen • 2025-04-09

Meet the Winners from Missouri Startup Weekend

Some of the biggest names in Missouri’s startup ecosystem trace their roots to a 60-second pitch. Zapier, a household name in the SaaS world, started at Startup Weekend in 2011 with a scrappy team, a shared Google Doc, and an idea to connect apps. The team even documented their entire startup weekend journey and we brought that story back from the archives here: Zapier: From the Archive. EquipmentShare, now a national construction tech company with thousands of employees, also got its start pitching at the 2014 startup weekend.

The event has since evolved and changed names, but the impact Missouri Startup Weekend is the same. Over the last three years, it’s propelled three founders to build their MOSW ideas: Nick Farquhar, founder and CEO of Appreciate and 2022 first-place winner; Chrystal Graves, founder and CEO of LiQUiD and 2023 first-place winner; and Kiley Grimes, founder of Soundcheck and 2024 second-place winner. These aren’t just weekend projects that impressed the judges—they’re companies that kept going. Here’s how they experienced Startup Weekend, and how it’s shaped what they’ve been building ever since.

At the time, Nick Farquhar was a Mizzou student and already a two-time business owner—running a six-figure power washing company and managing a growing real estate portfolio. He showed up at MOSW in 2022 expecting to observe, not pitch. But when the final call came for Friday night ideas, something shifted. He stepped forward with an idea that lived in the tension of his own life—he was a landlord frustrated with inefficiencies in property management. “As the last call countdown was happening I was struck with a synthesis of the ideas. Very much a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

The original pitch was a tenant scoring system. It wasn’t the final idea, but it was enough to spark something. His team was small—just four people—and pulling together a compelling final pitch was a challenge. “The sheer volume of work that we had to do with a very small team was hard to manage,” Nick recalled. “Our pitch deck was the least polished, and we had no MVP—but we had the most validation from the market.”

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With guidance from mentor Brad Siegler, Nick realized the idea had legs—just not the ones he thought. “He [Brad] had the highest impact on the company from the very beginning and later joined Appreciate as a Cofounder,” Nick points out.

That weekend laid the foundation for Appreciate, a vertically integrated real estate company that’s now clearing $56K in monthly recurring revenue and running lean with a powerful ops team. The company has generated over $4 million in capital gains, added $500K to its balance sheet in 2024, and raised more than $1.1 million in funding. Nick is proud to call out that every startup weekend team member owns a little piece of the company.

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He didn’t take a victory lap. Instead he opened a business bank account, called Redbud VC, kept building. And then—he dropped out of college. For the second time.

Get to know more about Nick, Appreciate, and what he's looking for as a Friday night idea judge → here.

Chrystal Graves didn’t even know what Startup Weekend was until a coffee meeting the Thursday before MOSW 2023. A friend asked what was next—and she didn’t have an answer. But she had a problem she knew better than anyone: salon owners needed real tools to run their businesses. By the end of that conversation, her friend handed Chrystal her own ticket, realizing the power that MOSW could bring to help Chrystal solve that problem. By Friday night, she was on stage giving her 60-second pitch.

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“I didn’t walk into Startup Weekend with a fully formed idea,” Chrystal said. “This wasn’t something I had been planning for months—it was a conversation over coffee that turned into an opportunity to build something real.”

The platform she envisioned wasn’t a scheduling app. It was an operational backbone built from lived experience. With a team that blended close friends and strangers—including an engineer who interviewed her before signing on—Chrystal built the MVP for what is now LiQUiD: a tech platform for the overlooked backbone of the beauty industry.

“What made our team so powerful was its diversity—in expertise, background, thought, and culture. We had such a wide range of perspectives, and I truly believe that’s what set us apart and helped us win. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to bring this idea to life. The challenge was learning to trust and delegate quickly. Some of us knew each other, but others were complete strangers at the start of the weekend. We had to figure out how to work together effectively, assign responsibilities, and make sure every team member’s expertise was being utilized in the best way possible.”

“The biggest aha moment for me over the weekend was realizing that even though I was the expert in the problem, I couldn’t build the solution alone,” she said. “That reinforced that solving big problems requires collaboration.

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Since Startup Weekend, Chrystal has gone all in. She sold her salon, renamed the company from All Hair Academy to LiQUiD, and started scaling. The MVP launched 60 days after MOSW. Three hundred paid users joined in the first 72 hours. She’s raised over $500K, earned a spot in Techstars, pitched on national stages at AfroTech and Harvard, and grown LiQUiD’s community to over 13,000 salon pros.

Learn more about Chrystal, her company, and what she's looking for as a Friday night idea judge → here.

Kiley Grimes came to Missouri Startup Weekend in 2024 planning to help Redbud VC run operations—not to build a team. “I was actually supposed to be volunteering,” she said. “But earlier that day, I had just placed at a Mizzou pitch competition and was fired up. So, on a total whim, I decided to throw my name in for the Friday night pitch.” She missed the deadline by 20 minutes, but her name still got called.

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The idea she pitched was personal. She grew up surrounded by music—her dad and brother gigged in Springfield, IL—and at Mizzou, she used to sneak into dorm basements just to find a piano. That idea became Music Den, later renamed Soundcheck: a 24/7 rehearsal studio where musicians could finally play without limits.

“My team and I realized the music industry is even more archaic and inefficient than I thought,” she said. “The biggest issue? The industry is completely fragmented—recording, rehearsal, retail, rentals, venues, lessons, labels, tours, networking—none of it connects.”

Soundcheck is her attempt to connect it. It’s not just a room with drums—it’s an infrastructure play. She’s building a space that serves as a hub for all things music. Taking it one vertical at a time, right now, she’s just focused on rehearsals, recording, and lessons. “Just like a software company has to push updates, I’m constantly upgrading—better equipment, smoother booking flow, expanded services. Still staying true to my MOSW pitch, but Columbia is my testing ground.”

Her favorite moment from the weekend? “When the clock hit 4:00 a.m. on Saturday night, and we were mid-flipping the business model upside down. The longer you stay at MOSW, the loopier things get.”

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She skipped class that following Monday to open a business bank account. By June, she had signed a lease. By October, Soundcheck opened in Columbia’s North Village Arts District. She placed second at MOSW and to date has raised $22,500 through pitch competitions—while continuing to build and test what could become a multi-location creative brand.

None of these stories follow a formula. Nick dropped out. Chrystal sold her salon. Kiley threw out the weekend she planned and pitched instead. But all three leaned into a weekend that pushes people past what they thought was possible.

If you’re on the fence about pitching this year, this is your sign. You don’t have to have it all figured out, you just have to show up.

Good luck to everyone pitching at Missouri Startup Weekend 2025. We’ll be cheering you on.

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