UMSL Business Blog

#MDMC19: 5 St. Louis Startups You Need To Know About

By Katelyn Chostner


St. Louis is slowly working their way to being one of the top startup cities in America. Here are five startups that you need to keep an eye on and why:

  1.  Advocado

With over 20 years of experience, Advocado works on transforming your broadcast T.V. advertising into a real-time bidding system. You’re able to control your ad shares with this advertising agency and take your digital ad campaigns to television commercials.

According to Brian Handrigan, CEO and Cofounder of Advocado, you will gain a 98 percent click-through rate when transferring to Advocado.

  1. Final Thoughts

This startup allows you to leave messages with your loved ones after you’ve passed on. Matthew Hansard, founder and CEO of Final Thoughts, created this startup to improve mental health outcomes for people who are facing a serious illness. Final Thoughts focuses on helping you get therapeutic solutions through the digital world.

  1. Voice XP

“Voice is the new swipe,” according to Bonnie Snyder, Cofounder of Voice XP. Snyder shows how utilizing smart speakers to interact with consumers to advertise your business over all of the others. A good example would be if a potential customer is asking their smart speaker which doctor to go to, if you work with Voice XP, your business will be the one that is mentioned first with more detail.

  1. Regavi

Imagine having a bank for your data, this is exactly what Regavi is. Michael P. Kramer, CEO of Regavi, works on bringing you cohesive contact info for all of the digital systems you use. You’ll be able avoid identity fraud, pull info off the web and store it all on Regavi. This all helps you “make connections better.”

  1. GiftAMeal

Andrew Glantz, founder, and CEO of GiftAMeal created the startup to focus on giving meals to those in need in St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. With GiftAMeal your restaurant can sign up to participate and gain ROI with customers who choose to visit your place of business after being advertised on GiftAMeal. All the customer needs to do to get a meal donated to a local foodbank is to post a photo of their meal on the app.

These startups gathered together at the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference April 18 to compete in the Startup Pitch Competition. Each company had two minutes to pitch their startup to win $2,500 to put toward their mission.

After hearing their compelling pitches, panelists were able to ask each company questions for 30 seconds. Once all of the startups took their turn, the panelists stepped into the hallway to unanimously decide on the winner: GiftAMeal.

GiftAMeal has won several awards including two awards at Startup Connection in November 2018. The startup has been able to contribute over 254,568 meals in St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.

Even though GiftAMeal won the competition, it doesn’t mean they didn’t do it without a fight. These five startups are making their way to the top so make sure you check them out soon!