Editor’s note: Startland News editors selected 10 Kansas City scaling businesses to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. Now in its 10th year, this feature recognizes founders and startups that editors believe will make some of the biggest, most compelling news in the coming 12 months. The following is one of 2025’s companies.
Click here to view the full list of Startups to Watch — presented by Morgan Stanley, and independently produced by Startland News — and see how the companies (including this one) were selected.
A career in health tech and electronic health records sent Kyle McAllister down an unexpected path — launching an artificial intelligence-infused startup to tackle clinical trial inefficiencies and streamline patient recruitment.
“It just kind of felt like everything that I did in my career all culminated into this thing, which was really cool and kind of cathartic,” said McAllister, CEO and co-founder of Trially. “It was like everything suddenly lined up and culminated in what we’re building here at Trially.”
Founded in 2023, Trially automates the lengthy, manual process of identifying eligible trial participants. Its AI reads clinical trial protocols and integrates with EHR (electronic health records) systems to identify matches faster and more accurately.
“Most clinical trial sites including physician offices and hospitals aren’t able to access all of the rich, unstructured data in their EHR systems,” McAllister explained.
- Elevator pitch: Trially is an AI-powered clinical trials platform that precisely matches patients to trials and trials to sites. We’re supercharging drug development by helping sponsors, CROs, and sites make perfect matches between trials, sites and patients.
- Founders: Kyle McAllister, Trevor Welch, and Ramon Prieto
- Headquarters location: Kansas City, Missouri
- Founding year: 2023
- Current employee count: 8
- Funding amount raised to date: Pre-seed in April 2024, amount undisclosed
- Noteworthy investors: Alpaca, Looking Glass Capital, Atria Ventures, Redbud VC, The Council
- Noteworthy programs/accelerators/incubators completed: N/A
Instead of research coordinators combing through patient records, Trially’s AI also analyzes EHRs, physician notes, and PDFs to match patients to trial criteria, simplifying the process.
“On the back end, it’s complicated. On the front end, it’s stupid simple,” said McAllister. “We just stack-rank it for the trial site: here’s everybody that matches — the best possible matches at the top, the more questionable matches at the bottom.”
Trevor Welch, Trially
Ramon Prieto, Trially
McAllister encountered these hurdles at companies like Epic and Cerner. His co-founders, Trevor Welch and Ramon Prieto, brought expertise in machine learning and AI, including experience at Zapier.
“The match [between us] just made sense. I kind of lived the problem, and they brought the technical side of it,” he said.
Welch, a co-founder of Messenger Coffee in Kansas City, reflects the entrepreneurial spirit at Trially’s core.
In late 2023, Trially earned validation in its early stages with funding from Digital Sandbox KC.
“That was huge,” said McAllister. “It’s just helpful to have that funding to do projects. And it’s a good signal to other investors and people in the community — validation that this is a good idea.”
This year, Trially has focused on proving its concept through partnerships and measurable results.
“How do we come out of those relationships with strong case studies to show, ‘If you put us in, enrollment will go up, efficiency will be gained?’” McAllister asked. “Last year was about getting the product live and proving it works.”
As Trially looks to 2025, growing the company and driving revenue is the priority, he noted.
“Now, how do we sell more aggressively? How do we take this thing and scale it into a really big, growing company?’ That’s where I’m spending my time now: building a sales engine, really driving growth and revenue,” he said.
McAllister’s wife, Meredith McAllister, is also a founder of her own startup, Marma (which also was selected as one of Startland News’ Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2025), making their household uniquely entrepreneurial as the pair motivate and inspire each other on their respective journeys.
“It’s really cool to be in it at the same time. It’s one of those things we’ll look back on in 40 years and say, ‘Wasn’t that a crazy thing?’ Something that we will show our kids when they’re older to be proud of,” said McAllister.
For now, McAllister remains focused on his mission to scale.
“The AI we built is doing the thing we said it would do,” he said. “Now it’s time to go bigger.”
10 Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2025
- Good Oak scales social venture to boost biodiversity in farming, herd ag industry toward change
- Hilltop Technologies targets cybersecurity for Main Street (with help from next-gen talent)
- Icorium matches a complex environmental threat with Kansas-powered innovation
- LPOXY Therapeutics punches back at gut infection (and a foe with a billion-year head start)
- Marma pushes women’s nutrition to the forefront, birthing resources on demand
- Noonan scores under par success with digital caddie as golf market earns deepage
- OLEO roasts plans for slow-drip craft retail concepts, starting with coffee (and soon a diner)
- Raise Health tasks AI tools with a multiplier mission — detecting mental health struggles early
- Scout charts early adoption with digital veterinary workflow platform, diagnosing industry burnout
