On June 27th, Founder Laura Amado and blockchain-enabled decentralized coffee marketplace Fantine were crowned the first-ever Founder Institute impact startup Pitch For Purpose Champion! In the final globally-broadcast Demo Day live event, Fantine pitched last, going up against the formidable fellow impact Founders of PraxiLabs and SolverGen, ultimately taking home the grand prize - and the competition was razor close.
Judging the 3 Impact Startup Finalist pitches were a distinguished panel of investors, including Christine Herron of Bullpen Ventures and 500 Startups, and the former Director of the Intel Capital Diversity Fund; as well as Noah Doyle, Managing Director of Javelin Venture Partners; and Adeo Ressi, CEO of the Founder Institute.
The judges' minds were split, and the decision came down to a live audience vote that could not have been much closer: 30% for SolverGen, 33% for PraxiLabs, and 37% for Fantine!
With 6200 registered participants for the live Demo Day event, Fantine was truly the People's Choice in being crowned our first-ever Pitch For Purpose champion.
Fantine is a Colombian startup, creating a blockchain-enabled marketplace to deliver unprecedented levels of transparency into the coffee crop value chain. You can watch winning pitch in the video above, or learn more about Fantine by reading our full profile piece.
At the Founder Institute, we believe entrepreneurs can solve the world's greatest challenges. We believe building a business can and should be about more than just making money: that entrepreneurship is a vehicle for building new systems and incentives to create lasting positive social and environmental effects on our physical world and global communities.
We were thoroughly blown away by the volume and quality of submissions we received in this first-ever free and open impact startup Pitch For Purpose competition. Founders from 30+ countries around the world submitted video entries into the Pitch For Purpose competition—and in total, more than 3200 votes were cast by the public to help us select the finalist startups!
We want to take a moment to say thank you again to each and every social and environmental impact startup Founder who took the time create a video pitch and submit their entry to the competition. We launched the Pitch For Purpose competition this spring as a new FI for Good initiative, to elevate the critical work being done worldwide by the Founders of impactful companies.
Among the pitch entries submitted that closely adhered to one of the predefined FI for Good impact categories (based largely upon the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals), above is the percentage breakdown of industries or impact areas, as measured from across all qualifying Pitch For Purpose 2019 startups.
We are truly humbled by the tremendous pitches we received from around the world through the open submission round. The huge diversity of business ideas, the level of passion exhibited, and the areas of impact targeted by these Pitch For Purpose social impact Founders demonstrate an optimism for the future that we find deeply inspiring.
Thank you again to each and every Founder who submitted a Pitch For Purpose competition entry – and congratulations again to our first-ever impact startup champion, Founder Laura Amado of Fantine. The Founder Institute is proud to support the work being done by Founders creating positive impact in the world through purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
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Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.75BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
