CoMo: More than just a college town
On the road, part 5
Joe and I ended our 2025 conference schedule in Columbia, Missouri (or as I’ve recently learned, “CoMo”) at the Main Street Summit. We had no idea what to expect.
For those unfamiliar, the Main Street Summit is a two-day conference for owners, operators, and investors of small to medium-sized businesses. The summit was launched two years ago by Brent Beshore, founder of Permanent Equity, a Columbia-based private equity firm, with the goal of creating an opportunity for business owners to connect and learn from each other. Since then, it’s grown significantly. The 2025 edition brought together over 120 speakers and 1,200 attendees across seven program tracks: venture and startup, manufacturing, construction, franchise, health, nonprofit, and faith and work. Joe and I were honored to be part of the speaker lineup, doing a fireside chat on what it means to be emerging managers.
Travel Day (Nov 4th)
We landed in St. Louis late in the morning. Joe and I grabbed a shuttle to the Enterprise rental car stop, where Joe immediately started speaking in Enterprise lingo with the guy behind the counter, reminiscing about his time working at Enterprise. During our two-hour drive to CoMo, I got a full history lesson on Enterprise, including the fact that its headquarters is in St. Louis.
When we arrived in downtown CoMo late in the afternoon, I was immediately taken by how charming the area was. It felt like one of those picturesque towns you see in a Hallmark movie. Joe and I wandered around the downtown blocks to stretch our legs before settling into a coffee shop to knock out some final meetings before the summit kicked off the next day.
Around 6pm, we walked a few blocks over to The Atrium, the main conference building, for check-in and pass pickup. The moment we stepped inside, both our jaws dropped. The level of hospitality, warmth, and welcoming atmosphere was unlike any other conference we’ve attended. Delicious food was constantly replenished throughout the day, on-demand snacks from top brands lined the tables, and drinks flowed freely. As speakers, we got a few extra perks: limited edition Main Street Summit-branded sweatshirts and a gift card to the “General Store,” which had even more swag and goodies. After checking in, we headed to our hotel to drop our bags and get ready for the kickoff barbeque social.
The Mexican food was delicious with a smoky twist to it. After grabbing plates, Joe and I split up to meet new people. I talked with franchise owners, a small business owner who installs fiber optic internet cables, and a fractional general counsel who turned out to also be an LP. At first, a lot of folks were surprised to hear I’d come all the way from NYC for the summit. But I quickly earned some street cred when they asked if it was my first time in CoMo. Not only had I been there before when I played volleyball in college against Mizzou, but both my parents went to medical school there.
It was a great kickoff to the summit.
Day 1 (Nov 5th)
We started the morning early with a few meetings at a local coffee shop with potential LPs. After that, we headed over with everyone else to the beautiful Missouri Theater for the first main stage session by Brent Beshore. Fun fact: the Missouri Theater was built in 1928 and designed in the style of the Opéra Garnier by the Boller Brothers. It’s Columbia’s only surviving pre-Depression movie palace and vaudeville stage.
The theater was packed as Brent welcomed everyone, and what struck me about his opening talk was the focus on relationship building. Unlike most conferences that feel transactional and exhausting, Brent emphasized the importance of building genuine relationships over checking boxes on agendas. This summit was about community and a give-first mentality over “what can I get out of it.” That resonated deeply with me. There’s real beauty in serendipity and getting to know people on a personal level before jumping into business. It creates space to meet incredible people and learn insights or perspectives you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Sometimes when you meet someone, you don’t realize the potential impact they’ll have on you down the road. This became the recurring theme of the Main Street Summit for Joe and me.
After the kickoff, everyone dispersed around downtown to their respective tracks for meetings, fireside chats, panels, and activities. For Joe and me, that meant splitting up for a full day of running around CoMo for coffee meetings with prospective LPs, ecosystem partners, and founders. Main Street Summit was incredibly well thought out and intentional about incorporating local businesses into the agenda. I took coffee meetings in cozy coffee shops, walking meetings around downtown, and even met someone in a bookstore.
The attendee mix was different from most conferences I’ve been to. There were small business owners, investors, founders, and fractional service providers who also angel invested on the side. For many people I spoke with, investing was either something they’d dabbled in a few times or were completely new to.
After what felt like a week’s worth of coffee in one day, Joe and I headed to Serendipity, an event space where an LP panel discussion was underway, moderated by Brett Calhoun, GP of Redbud VC. The panelists included LPs from university endowments, HNWIs, and fund of funds. The panel turned into an interesting debate over the merits of emerging managers versus established managers. One LP panelist was particularly vocal about emerging managers providing the best opportunity for returns. As he continued talking, Joe leaned over and said, “that’s our kind of LP.” I turned to him and said, “I know him. I met him last night at the barbeque.” The LP is a fractional general counsel and allocator based in St. Louis.
After the panel, Joe and I pulled him aside and scheduled time to meet after the summit. That’s when we learned Joe and the LP had a strong personal connection to Enterprise. Joe had washed cars at the LAX location when he was still figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, while the LP’s father had worked his way up the ranks. They both saw Enterprise the same way: a quality, family-owned business that actually takes care of its people. That shared experience, years apart and across the country, created instant trust. This is why I love meeting new people. You never know where a conversation will lead or what unexpected things you’ll have in common.
Day 2 (Nov 6th)
The next morning, Joe and I kicked things off with a coffee meeting with Craig Ready, a general counsel and angel investor based in Charlotte. We learned about the Charlotte startup ecosystem and how it’s emerging but still has a ways to go compared to the Research Triangle.
Afterward, we made our way back to The Atrium where we caught up with our good friend Alexandra O’Hagan from Flyover Capital (Kansas City based VC firm). If anyone wants to know what’s happening in the Midcon region for startups and investing, Alexandra is the person to talk to. Following that chat, we sat down with Brett Calhoun at Redbud VC (Missouri-based pre-seed VC firm). We talked about how he started Redbud and his fundraising journey. His advice was direct: find the right LP archetype for your fund and lean into that heavily. For Redbud, that meant Mizzou alumni and folks with personal ties to Missouri. That single insight helped Joe and me completely refine our LP outreach. We stopped casting a wide net and started focusing on people who’d naturally resonate with our backgrounds and thesis.
We wrapped up the conference with our fireside chat, “Thesis Driven Dollars,” moderated by Maria Heyen from Redbud VC. Joe and I talked about what it means to be an emerging manager and how you build a high conviction thesis.
As we got in the car and drove back to St. Louis to catch our flight to NYC, I jotted down some key takeaways from Main Street Summit.
Main Street Summit is special and feels less like a conference and more like a community of kind-hearted people who genuinely want to support one another without hidden agendas.
The two biggest program tracks were Faith Tech and Franchises. What’s categorized as Faith Tech was much broader than I initially thought. Faith Tech isn’t just focused on religion, but a way of living focused on doing good and making a positive impact in your community.
Main Street Summit mirrors our experience in Tulsa at MidCon Summit: fully coordinated collaboration across public, private, and academic institutions. The conferences with the strongest ROI are those where the entire ecosystem is involved.
Community ties matter. As an outsider coming from NYC to CoMo, many local attendees expected I’d have zero connection to the city or state. But I actually have two: I played against Mizzou in CoMo during my college volleyball career at Rice, and both my parents attended medical school at Mizzou. Those small connections to the community immediately changed how people engaged with me.
Maria Heyen and Brett Calhoun from Redbud VC were incredible hosts who made sure we all felt extremely welcome. Even after two days of running around making sure everything ran smoothly, Brett took the time to chat with Joe and me about fundraising and share insights from his experience starting Redbud.
As Joe and I boarded our flight back to NYC, one thing was clear: this is one of the best conference we’ve ever attended. We’ll be back in 2026 and we’re bringing more investor friends to experience what makes the Main Street Summit so special.
But beyond the networking ROI, Main Street Summit matters because it expands the definition of innovation itself. Unlike most conferences that treat venture capital as the only path to building something meaningful, Main Street Summit showcases different models: SMBs, franchises, and permanent capital structures. For America to maintain its edge in innovation, we need all of these models working together, not just the venture-backed unicorn narrative. That’s the real lesson from CoMo.
Missouri isn’t a major tech hub, but there’s a decent amount of innovation happening in the state. According to PitchBook, in 2025, about $856M in venture capital was raised across 58 deals in Missouri. Over the last decade, deal volume has fluctuated but without significant variation. However, deal value has increased 138.5% since 2015. There’s more activity brewing in the state, and if you’re planning to travel to Missouri, the Main Street Summit is the right occasion for anyone interested in the startup, SMB, and venture activity happening there.
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