The St. Louis startup, tech, and marketing communities have another strong week ahead from August 10-16, 2026. With events tailored for every stage of the entrepreneurial journey, there’s no better time to get involved. Our Founder, Erik Lutenegger, has put together this week’s must-see events and opportunities spanning networking, mentorship, skill development, and pure inspiration.
ESO, Accelerator, and Funding Opportunities
Apply Now // Venture Ready Missouri | Capital Innovators & Missouri Technology Corporation
Missouri founders can sharpen their fundraising skills through this free, two-part venture readiness program. Entrepreneurs learn how to navigate venture capital, craft compelling investor pitches, and develop a fundraising strategy, with top participants advancing to one-on-one coaching and a live pitch showcase before investors. (Bootcamp)
Apply Now // Square One (SQ1) Bootcamp | Cortex’s Square One
Ready to move beyond the idea stage? This intensive 10-week accelerator helps entrepreneurs transform early traction into a fundable business through expert-led instruction, hands-on coaching, and practical deliverables like financials, a business model, and a polished pitch deck. (Bootcamp)
Due August 21 // Lift Beauty Accelerator 2026 | Rare Beauty Brands
Early-stage beauty brands led by founders from underrepresented communities can compete for one of three spots in this free accelerator offering at least $10,000 in non-dilutive funding, hands-on mentorship from beauty industry experts, and more than $24,000 in in-kind testing, consulting, and design services. Selected brands also receive practical support tackling real startup challenges and an opportunity to pitch JCPenney for potential online or in-store distribution. (Accelerator)
Due August 31 // Empower Growth Micro-Grant | Black & Brown Founders
Underrepresented entrepreneurs with demonstrated revenue over the past 12 months can apply for one of four micro-grants designed to help scale, stabilize, or systematize an existing business. Funds can support marketing, technology and automation, website or e-commerce improvements, consultants, hiring support, or expanded production and service delivery. Applicants must provide proof of revenue, explain how the funding will support growth, and complete the assessment, with finalists also submitting a one-minute video pitch. (Grant)
Due September 3 // Founder Framework Fall 2026 Cohort | T-REX
Early-stage founders can build a stronger foundation for growth through this free, competitive 11-week program led by venture capitalist Vikram Lakhwara. In-person sessions at T-REX cover customer discovery, value propositions, business models, market sizing, go-to-market strategy, financial storytelling, and investor readiness, helping participants validate their ideas, refine product-market fit, and develop practical materials for future grants, pitch competitions, and fundraising. (Bootcamp)
Startup, Tech, and Marketing Events
August 10
Smarter ways to grow your contact list | Enterprise Nation
Unveil straightforward methods to attract new contacts and collect useful data about subscribers’ interests, including inventive capture ideas and ongoing list management practices designed to help you segment, personalise and nurture relationships for sustained business growth. (Virtual)
The Secret to a Great Sales Culture | Small Business University
Connect with proven sales practices as Jess Reagen breaks down the SOS framework and shows how structured processes drive consistent results. Expect clear guidance on building repeatable systems, tracking key metrics, and aligning teams to scale revenue during this focused 45-minute webinar. (Virtual)
Pricing Your Work as a Creator | Freelancers Union
Learn practical strategies in a concise online workshop focused on pricing creative services and sold work, with an instructor-led rubric, real-world examples, and guidance to help you evaluate projects, justify fees, and make pricing choices you can defend with confidence. (Virtual)
Sip & Connect Chesterfield: Where Conversations Turn Into Connections | WIN ENTERPRISES
Embrace a friendly, high-energy evening crafted for professionals, business owners and creatives to meet, converse and pursue collaborative opportunities. Over two and a half hours, attendees can engage in purposeful networking, forge new relationships and broaden their professional reach in a welcoming environment. (In-Person | Total Wine & More)
August 11
August 11-13 // The Nonprofits & AI Summit | The Nonprofits & AI Summit
Transform your founding process through modular curriculum focused on mission clarity, legal readiness, and funding automation. Practical 90-minute labs cover LLM workspace setup, bylaws and filings, targeted proposal prompts, and automated donor sequencing so you can launch and scale faster with AI. (Virtual)
How to Find the First Customers for Your Startup Idea | Founder Institute
Immerse yourself in an interactive session focused on customer discovery techniques, crafting persuasive messaging, low-cost acquisition channels, and early sales conversations, with time for Q&A so founders can refine pitch approaches and leave with a prioritized list of next actions to test immediately. (Virtual)
Understanding Your Funding Options: Loans, Grants, Investors and More | SCORE
Weigh the full range of small business funding paths, from bank loans and SBA programs to grants and outside investors, with guidance on what lenders and funders look for and how to match a financing option to your stage and cash flow needs. (Virtual)
Winning Humans and Machines in the New B2B Buying Journey with Intercept | Marketing AI Institute
Discover what in-depth buyer interviews and analysis of hundreds of thousands of online conversations reveal about AI’s growing influence on B2B purchasing. The session examines how brands are found, assessed, and compared, while highlighting ways marketers can strengthen credibility and visibility. (Virtual)
Securing agents for scale: Breakthroughs in agent governance | Google Cloud
Explore pragmatic approaches to securing fleets of agents through sessions on threat modeling, continuous compliance, and telemetry-driven governance, alongside demonstrations and practitioner panels that reveal how teams can implement scalable, verifiable controls without blocking innovation. (Virtual)
STL 101: How Cultural Festivals Strengthen St. Louis | St. Louis Mosaic Project
Discover vibrant programming that blends traditional performances, culinary showcases, educational exhibits, and youth activities, offering museums, cultural organizations, and local artists platforms to connect with diverse audiences and promote civic engagement, cultural literacy, and sustained economic impact across St. Louis neighborhoods. (In-Person | St. Louis Mosaic Project)
Processing Async Jobs in Django | PyData
Unite with fellow Python developers for a focused talk on asynchronous task processing: learn Celery fundamentals, explore strategies for connecting web apps to workers, weigh distributed-systems trade-offs, review deployment and maintenance tips, see concrete Django examples, and enjoy pizza alongside networking and Q&A. (In-Person | Spark Coworking)
Simple Digital Strategies for Business Growth | St. Louis County Library
Gain actionable skills from Tim Valli in a focused marketing series designed for small businesses, learning to implement data-driven tests, position your website as the core of your online strategy, measure what matters, and eliminate common mistakes that waste limited marketing budgets. (In-Person | Clark Family Branch)
SLU New Venture Accelerator Demo Day | Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship
Celebrate a cohort of founders completing an intensive accelerator focused on turning promising ideas into viable businesses. The evening features networking, opening remarks, and team pitches showcasing ventures strengthened through expert guidance, customer validation, revenue modeling, and entrepreneurial resources. (In-Person | Saint Louis University, DuBourg Hall)
August 12
South St Louis City: Coffee and Connections | Little Black Book
Bask in an upbeat, one-hour gathering where entrepreneurs and professionals meet for coffee, share fresh perspectives, and build relationships that matter. Learn how a focused local business network prioritizes community, brand growth, and collaborative opportunities for members and neighbors alike. (In-Person | Zoomies)
Defending Against Rogue AI: What the OpenAI/Hugging Face Incident Means for Cybersecurity Leaders | Gartner
Assess what the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident signals about rogue AI risk, as Gartner analysts walk cybersecurity leaders through exposure created by third-party model platforms, controls worth tightening now, and how to frame the threat for executive audiences. (Virtual)
Startup IP Strategy: Protect, Monetize, and Scale | Cogent Law
Embark on a founder-focused exploration of startup IP where a patent attorney maps out protecting inventions, filing priorities, trademark strategy, and structuring licensing to monetize technology, while offering clear, actionable milestones to improve fundraising prospects and long-term exit value. (Virtual)
Seeing and Being Seen — Market Research in the AI Era | Veterans In Business Network
Learn practical tactics for navigating AI-driven Federal market research, including techniques to discover contract opportunities, strengthen capability statements, elevate business visibility with buyers, and responsibly incorporate AI into workflows so your organization can pursue Federal contracts with improved accuracy and confidence. (Virtual)
From Late-Stage to Listing: Structuring a Public-Ready Equity Stack | Carta
Map the route from late-stage private company to public listing, with Carta covering how equity structures are cleaned up and stress-tested ahead of an offering, plus the cap table, reporting, and administration work that needs to be in place first. (Virtual)
How AI Expands What Small Businesses Can Do (Livestream)forum.openai | OpenAI Forum
Dive into real-world applications as two small-business operators demonstrate AI for scheduling, marketing, and regulatory compliance, then hear OpenAI Economic Research share findings from their paper on how AI helps people take on new kinds of work, concluding with a panel discussion and audience questions. (Virtual)
The $3.5 Billion Bet to Build America’s Drones | VP of Product, Skydio | Product School
Hear Skydio’s VP of Product discuss the push to build a domestic drone industry, covering product strategy, defense and enterprise demand, and what scaling hardware manufacturing takes in a category long dominated by overseas suppliers. (Virtual)
LinkedIn Strategy for Conversations and Opportunities | NY Public Library, Thomas Yoseloff Business Center
Take part in an interactive online workshop where Maggie Carey breaks down how to move beyond posting: crafting visibility-driven content, using comments strategically to increase engagement, initiating deeper conversations, and applying easy, actionable methods to cultivate stronger business relationships and outcomes. (Virtual)
Don’t Skip the Fine Print: Privacy Policies, Terms of Use & More | Start Small Think Big
Sort through the legal documents most small businesses skim past, including privacy policies, terms of use, and customer-facing disclosures, with practical guidance on what those agreements actually commit you to and when professional review is worth the cost. (Virtual)
Trademarks, Copyrights, and Patents Webinar | New Growth Women’s Business Center
Absorb clear, real-world guidance from a business attorney on how trademarks, copyrights, and patents differ, when protections apply, and practical strategies to prevent infringement, with step-by-step advice tailored to entrepreneurs launching, product-creating, or expanding their brands and offerings. (Virtual)
Geosaurus Unleashed | T-REX
Embrace a practitioner-led case study that outlines the tools, design standards, and production steps used to adapt maps for visually impaired audiences, complemented by a chance to network with attendees, explore practical takeaways, and discuss accessibility strategies for projects. (In-Person | T-REX)
Data + AI Summit Rewind | Databricks User Group St. Louis
Kickstart conversations around practical impact as speakers unpack major themes: agentic data foundations for real-time analytics, unified governance across clouds, and new Genie products with Ontology and App Builder that let teams create governed AI coworkers and deploy apps quickly and safely. (In-Person | Object Computing Inc.)
Learn the Benefits of a Workplace Retirement Plan for Your Business | Asian American Chamber of Commerce of St. Louis
Partake in a community-driven seminar exploring workplace retirement plan benefits, with specialists explaining strategies to increase owner and key employee savings and optimize tax advantages, while guests mingle with regional professionals and enjoy complimentary light refreshments and drinks. (In-Person | Oh London)
August 13
AI in 2026: Taking Your AI Use to the Next Level | NYC Department of Small Business Services
Engage in a practical one-hour webinar where TAP consultants walk small business owners through 2026 AI developments, converting occasional AI experiments into consistent workflows, offering live demos to replicate, explaining AI agents and safety considerations, and helping prioritize the most impactful AI tasks. (Virtual)
2026 Most Influential Business Women | St. Louis Business Journal
Celebrate the leaders recognized by the St. Louis Business Journal for their influence across the region’s business community, with an awards program at The Ritz Carlton bringing together honorees, executives, and guests from across the area. (In-Person | The Ritz Carlton)
Refactoring Legacy Codebases | Cursor
Unveil step-by-step approaches to refactoring legacy systems using AI: participants will see how to build an implementation plan, leverage agents to export and transform code, iterate with browser tools for visual fidelity, parallelize work with subagents, and review changes with Bugbot. (Virtual)
Skill Lab: Building sites and dashboards | OpenAI Academy
Participate in a guided lab that walks you from source materials to an actionable dashboard, defining the audience, structuring links, selecting status cards and filters, and establishing review steps around access, freshness, and ownership to produce a maintainable site brief. (Virtual)
Claude for Business Development Representatives | Anthropic
Learn from live demos as presenters configure Claude Cowork with the exact connectors and skills your BDR workflows need, then build two repeatable processes: one that drafts replies in your tone and another that runs nightly to flag warm account signals. (Virtual)
Operationalizing Agentic AI: Governance, Observability + Human Control at Scale | Data Science Connect
Join a hands-on discussion about embedding governance and observability into agentic AI lifecycles, highlighting instrumentation, policy enforcement, and human control points that enable organizations to scale capabilities responsibly while retaining interpretability and operational resilience. (Virtual)
Strategies for Cyber Resilience, AI Governance & Smarter Municipal Decision Making | National League of Cities
Take in a focused webinar where city leaders explore moving from reactive cybersecurity to defensible decisions, with discussions on executive risk visibility, vendor exposure, peer benchmarking, and actionable governance steps, plus practical tools and next-step opportunities to strengthen municipal cyber resilience. (Virtual)
Founders Lounge | Powered by Metis Analytics
Experience collaborative weekly events that mix intimate founder conversations, expert-led workshops, and interactive virtual labs to prototype ideas, solve tactical problems, and build meaningful relationships with fellow innovators seeking funding, talent, and go-to-market insights in a supportive environment. (In-Person | Spark Coworking St. Louis)
Smoke & Savor: A Bourbon & Cigar Experience | 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis
Explore a convivial patio gathering where guests enjoy select bourbon and spirit samplings, specialty cocktails, chef-selected small bites, a dedicated cigar experience, and upbeat live DJ music, creating a relaxed setting to network, celebrate, and support community-enhancing programming. (In-Person | 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis)
THE PROMPTING GAMES | AfriTechSTL & MARKDOWNSTL
Uncover how prompting shapes real-time builds in a high-pressure coding tournament featuring timed rounds, blind judging, and surprise constraints. After each elimination, participants share their prompt histories and explain strategies, creating learning moments and networking opportunities for developers, students, and AI fans. (In-Person | MARKDOWNSTL)
August 14
PlayDays: AI Learning and Play | Filament
Partake in a series of playful workshops and demonstrations that break down AI ideas into approachable activities, combining hands-on experimentation, live examples, and collaborative challenges to build confidence, spark creativity, and encourage exploration of technology. (In-Person | Filament)
GIScience Ethics and Education in the Age of AI | Ohio State University (CURA)
Learn how ethics is taught as an explicit toolkit within modern GIS courses, with concrete approaches for detecting and mitigating bias, protecting privacy, ensuring fair representation, and assessing societal impact, illustrating why ethical reasoning remains central to GIS research, practice, and pedagogy amid AI advances. (Virtual)
B2B Advertising That Works: Tactics to Reach Buyers and Prove ROI | MarketingProfs
Sharpen your B2B advertising approach with tactics for reaching buyers who are difficult to target, plus measurement methods that stand up when leadership asks what the media spend actually returned. (Virtual)
Influencing Long Term Behavior | The Wedge
Explore a practical leadership lunch where attendees learn and practice curiosity-first techniques to identify what drives behavior, using structured questioning to transform feedback conversations into opportunities for lasting change across coaching, management, and educational contexts. (In-Person | The Wedge)
Bourbon Friday | Sponsored by Tenacity
Discover a welcoming gathering that pairs curated bourbon tastings with meaningful professional conversation, where entrepreneurs and creatives trade stories, advice, and support over three hours of casual mingling, plus convenient parking and short walks from local transit stops. (In-Person | TechArtista UCity)
Meet and Greet with Award Winning Nigerian Designer Ejiro | African Chamber of Commerce, St. Louis
Unite with designers, entrepreneurs, and style aficionados for a three-hour conversation and networking session led by an award-winning Nigerian creative, offering behind-the-scenes perspectives, personal anecdotes, and ample time to foster professional connections and spark collaborative possibilities. (In-Person | Oh London)
August 15
Summer Open House | Arch Reactor
Venture into a lively makerspace to tour fabrication areas, meet diverse makers, and enjoy grilled hot dogs and burgers alongside liquid nitrogen ice cream treats. Watch engaging demonstrations, including aluminum pouring, and see practical examples of electronics, woodworking, and open-source projects. (In-Person | Arch Reactor)
August 16
Book, Brunch & Blowout | Jennifer Bardot, G.R.I.T Founder
Embark on a cozy three-hour event blending lively book conversation, a communal brunch with savory and sweet options, and a salon-style blowout service to refresh your hair; expect friendly networking, curated reads, and hands-on styling from experienced local pros. (In-Person | The Boulevard Hair Co)
Join us on Meetup or Tiktok.
What’s on your mind this week? We’d love to hear about it in the comments! We’re constantly working to improve the St. Louis Startup, Tech, and Marketing Ecosystem. If you have an event or date to share, email us at [email protected].
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