Though Chase Scanlan is not old enough to drink, on Friday night he stood in front of about 150 people and shared his idea to streamline the bar experience.

How many times, the 19-year-old St. Louis-native asked, has someone had a problem paying their tab quickly in a packed bar? Depending on how his pitch was received at Startup Weekend�s opening event on Columbia�s south side, there might soon be an app to take care of that.

Scanlan�s idea is simple: connect all restaurants and bars in an area with the app and users can pay with their phones instead of having to yell at bartenders or wait impatiently before they can get on their way. He also suggested being able to hail a cab using the app.

�One click and you have your whole night covered,� Scanlan told the crowd.

Friday�s event kicked off the the sixth year of Columbia�s participation in Startup Weekend, a national not-for-profit that helps fund ideas for small businesses, mostly in the tech realm. The weekend pitch events also lead into the second annual Bringing Up Business: Mid-Missouri�s Innovation Week.

There were 140 people who signed up for the Startup Weekend this year, said Alyssa Patzius, vice president of client experience at Influence & Co., the company that organized the event.

It works like this, Patzius said: Participants get 60 seconds to pitch their idea to the group. They need to outline the problem they�ve identified, the app, product or service they�ve concocted to solve it and what kind of people, such as designers or marketers, they need to get it off the ground. After the pitches � Patzius estimated there would be between 40 and 50 of them � the group votes for which ones they liked the best, and the top 10 to 15 move on. Teams form to help the finalists develop their idea over the weekend. On Sunday, the teams will present their plans and judges decide the top three, who will receive some funding and other business assistance.

Daniel Johnsen, a volunteer from Startup Weekend, emceed the event and will lead the rest of the weekend for the hopeful entrepreneurs. He laid out the rules for ideas in addition to the pitch format. The only ideas accepted, he said, are ones that barely have been developed. Anyone with a patent, registered business or who only needs labor for their project is disqualified.The point of the weekend, he said, was to take an idea from the beginning and make it into a viable business plan in three days.

Other ideas pitched Friday night included a beauty product ingredient database, a website called Mo Wine Trails to locate trails in the state and sell merchandise, an app to help chemistry students learn math and a way to support blogs by giving the authors micropayments via Bitcoin.

There also was Alex Winkler�s idea � an app that helps people create their own drinking games. A few friends get together and make a playlist of about 15 songs, decide on some rules and the app randomly plays the songs and keeps track of the score using a points system. As, Winkler, 22, said, it�s simply �to mix music and a drinking game together.�

Luke Guerdan, 19, who had the idea to pay bloggers with Bitcoin, said he wanted to solve the problem of trying to make money with a blog without having to put up a paywall or ads.

�Neither one of those is any fun,� he said.