Editor’s note: Startland News editors selected 10 high-growth, scaling Kansas City companies to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch project. Now in its 11th 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 2026’s picks.
Click here to view the full list of Startups to Watch and see how the companies (including this one) were selected.
A year of major growth for Kansas City-based Roz — a startup that automates the most tedious parts of compliance work — has also come with a couple of pivots, shared co-founder Donnie Hampton.
“This growth started with a lot of folks betting on who Sarah and I are,” Hampton said of faith in him and co-founder Sarah Hampton (no relation), “and that ‘Hey, you’ll figure it out. We generally believe, yes, in this world of compliance, there’s a lot of opportunities. Don’t go on a suicide mission trying to solve everything, right? Where’s the greatest demand?’”
Launched in 2024, Roz finds documentation gaps, pulls evidence automatically, and checks continuously if companies are compliant with audits, contracts, regulations. It initially pivoted from targeting small and medium sized businesses to enterprise businesses after taking part in the Entrepreneurs Roundtable in New York earlier this year. Then, after starting a pilot with a Fortune 100 Enterprise, the co-founders realized that also focusing on firms who audit large enterprises made even more sense, Hampton noted.
“We realize there’s a much bigger opportunity,” he continued. “It was a flip for us where actually, surprisingly, third party service providers that provide audit advisory services in this space add a much bigger challenge. They said, ‘Hey, just like it works for our clients, it’s also very manual for us.”
Because of market dynamics, Hampton said, such third party service providers are doing more with less.
“Sometimes some of these firms are choosing offshore resources to apply margin savings for everybody,” he explained. “We just saw it as, ‘Wow, there’s a real demand to use what we’ve started at Roz by really solving and catering to this type of client that’s actually delivering the audit services.’”
Elevator pitch: Roz helps audit and risk advisory firms do more work with the same team by automating the most manual parts of their engagements. Firms use Roz to turn days of tedious manual work into hours, unlocking growth and better margins without relying on constant hiring.
- Founders: Donnie Hampton, Sarah Hampton (no relation)
- Headquarters: Kansas City, Austin
- Founding year: 2024
- Current employee count: 5
- Funding amount raised to date: $2.2 million
- Noteworthy investors: Outlander VC, KC Rise Fund, Service Provider Capital
- Noteworthy programs: Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA NYC), LaunchKC, Pure Pitch Rally, Digital Sandbox KC
On top of the momentum Roz saw this year with the Entrepreneurs Roundtable — a super angel/accelerator that netted the co-founders $275,000 in early 2025 — and the Enterprise 100 pilot, the startup also closed a $1.875 million pre-seed round in the summer, led by Outlander VC with investments by KCRise Fund and angel investors.
Sarah Hampton, co-founder of Roz, pitches to Pure Pitch Rally investors in October 2024; photo by Taylor Wilmore, Startland News
“Despite how wild this last year has been, we feel really blessed,” Hampton said, “because we did convince people to bet on us at different escalations of that, both on a customer and investor side. But as we were growing, the company’s definitely gotten more focused as a ship. So we feel really good, really excited.”
Much of the upward trajectory, he continued, came from learning where to focus the founders’ time and energy.
“With the enterprise opportunity, even though that was awesome — and it proved, ‘Wow, they’re onto something’ — not a lot of startups that are as small as our team could land a cool deal like that,” he explained. “But ultimately, as we reflected back, we have to make the hard calls. How much is our time cost to do the things they want and how repeatable is that? As you look at the market, that’s how we made the call, like, ‘Hey, this actually makes a lot more sense for us to grow.’”
The co-founders plan for 2026 to be a year of product market fit, Hampton noted, with a lot of aggressive targets.
“We want to be in a position that we can choose to raise if we want to,” he continued, “not because we need the money, but because we have a forecast on it. And truly that using that metaphor of pouring gas on it. That means good things like growing the team, not for the sake of it, but because we have to and, and really being the surprise, left-field platform offering that some of the current incumbents wouldn’t see coming.”
10 Kansas City Startups to Watch in 2026
- Authentiya puts ethical AI to the test as students embrace controversial classroom tech
- CarePilot prescribes more patient time, fewer clicks for doctors as product line grows
- Cyphra Autonomy pairs robotics with heavy labor (and a light lift for job site users)
- dScribe tracks early momentum with West Coast-Midwest funding combinator
- The Good Game connects young athletes with on-demand sports experts
- LAN Party gains steam with nostalgia as a hook, gaming enterprise potential as the real play
- LODAS Markets unlocks liquidity as timing pays off for founder’s investment
- Resonus wants local government to hear you — not just the loudest voices
- Sova Dating builds emotional matches with vibes, logistics and an unexpected viral moment
