It’s hard to believe that the 12th Founder Showcase has come and gone, and with that, several early-stage startup companies were given the opportunity to pitch on stage for the chance at impressing an audience of over 600 investors, press, and media, as well as 5 top Silicon Valley VCs.
In addition to the rousing pitch competition, attendees enjoyed talks from Keynote speakers David Sacks (Founder and CEO of Yammer) and Justin Moore (Founder and CEO of Axcient), which all in all, made for an enthralling and memorable evening.
Companies participating in the Founder Showcase Pitch Competition included:
- Writer.ly: Writer.ly is developing a marketplace to help writers successfully publish their books by connecting them directly with the services and experts they need.
- OnContracting: OnContracting is developing an online marketplace to help skilled professionals find contract jobs at great companies by offering contract job related advice with user generated data and reviews.
- HackerHires: HackerHires is developing a hiring assessment tool to help technical recruiters to identify the best developer in their hiring funnel with realistic project-like challenges and live deployments of the results
- HugeFan: HugeFan is developing an e-commerce platform to help touring performers make money for profit or cause with their superfans.
- SeatAssignMate: Airto is developing a web-based social seating check-in platform to help air travelers use Facebook and LinkedIn to see who will be onboard their flight and to choose their seats.
- iGenApps: iGenApps Inc is developing a mobile app to help smartphone and tablet users, with no programming skills, to create and generate content-driven mobile apps, for personal or business needs, with 4 simple steps and in less than 5 minutes.
- Spikes: Spikes is creating software to help large corporations address the biggest security threat on their network, the browser.
- SortBox: SortBox is developing an intuitive, cloud based software platform to help small businesses collect, screen and organize job applicants without the need for training or additional learning.
The competition was fierce and ultimately came down to a decision between Spikes and SortBox, whose pitches and founder expertise wowed the judges and the audience alike. In the end, Spikes came out on top, and took home the title as Founder Showcase Champion. Click here to read coverage of the event and see the winning pitches on PandoDaily.
Other companies who earned their way on stage through our Demo Table and CrowdPitch Competitions were; Explorence, CityBot, ZenCash, and JobFig - all of whom were impressive enough to win dinner and office hours with the event emcee, Adeo Ressi.
And, as usual, we had an amazing lineup of judges from the top venture firms in Silicon Valley, including; David Hornik (August Capital), Katherine Barr (Mohr Davidow), James Chan (Trinity Ventures), Noah Doyle (Javelin Venture Partners).
Thank you to everyone who attended and helped make this event possible – we look forward to seeing you at our next Showcase, taking place on February 28th, 2013 in Mountain View, California.
