Bresette's "TalkStride" app shines at Mizzou EQ program

The University of Missouri Entrepreneur Quest (EQ) program at the Griggs Innovators Nexus in the Division of Research empowers students to start their own businesses during college, and, according to Kelsey Raymond, executive director of entrepreneurship programs, there's no better time.

“Students get the support of the university, all of the resources we can provide, and opportunities to win money to launch their businesses,” Raymond said. “They also have a safety net and a built-in network of potential customers. That amount of support for entrepreneurship doesn't happen very often once you're in the real world.”

Mizzou's entrepreneurship and technology advancement programs attract students and researchers interested in commercializing products and services and founding startup companies based on academic discoveries. By translating innovative ideas into practical solutions, these programs help advance the university's research and economic development missions.

Some EQ graduates continue building their businesses, some pivot and pursue new venture ideas, and some gain more experience and skills by going back to school or working in industry. What they have in common is a passion for solving problems and a willingness to keep experimenting.

“Our students evolve," said Greg Bier, entrepreneur in residence at the Griggs Nexus. “Often, the real opportunity is the second, third or fourth venture. I remember when Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph talked to our students during COVID. He explained that Netflix was his sixth or seventh startup — one through five never got the traction he desired, but those ventures developed his passion for innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Nathan Bresette

Informatics doctoral student focusing on bioinformatics; founder of TalkStride
Hometown: Kansas City, Missouri

Nathan Bresette's ultimate goal is to become a professor and conduct Alzheimer’s research, but he also wants to run a startup company on the side to satisfy his entrepreneurial itch.

“Entrepreneurship is a true passion of mine,” Bresette said. “While some startups fail, including some of my own, I plan to continue learning, enjoying the process and doing my best every single day.”

Bresette took first place in EQ last year with Rgent, a contextually aware AI tool that his customers downloaded to make the R programming language in RStudio easier to use. What he didn’t anticipate, however, was that RStudio would later launch a built-in AI assistant that did the same thing and made Rgent obsolete.

“Ultimately, I feel okay about it,” Bressette said. “I learned an incredible amount, made some great connections, and it allowed me to pivot to my next startup, TalkStride.”

Milestones: Bresette created his new TalkStride app to help people improve their speaking skills.

“Speaking is a muscle,” he said. “If you practice it intentionally every day, you will get better at it. The app is designed to facilitate that daily practice by gamifying it.”

Bresette also is making strides in his PhD program. He is lead author on a paper published in June by mSystems, one of the American Society of Microbiology’s peer-reviewed journals. The paper introduces a new machine-learning framework designed to improve how researchers compare and analyze microbiome communities.

“I work in Dr. Ai-Ling Lin’s lab, where we approach Alzheimer’s research from a multitude of different angles,” Bresette said. “One of the most interesting areas of our research explores how the gut microbiome is directly tied to brain health. The idea being that if we can heal the gut, we can heal the brain.”

This story originally appeared on Mizzou Research, Innovation & Impact, on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.