The Veteran Fund & the Military Influencer Conference are excited to host the second annual $100,000 Veteran Pitch Competition!
During this live, in-person event, promising Veteran & Military Spouse-founded startups will pitch to a group of investors for a chance to win a $100,000 investment from The Veteran Fund. This event will take place LIVE in Las Vegas at the Military Influencer Conference on Friday, October 28th.
From 130+ applicants, 12 Semi-Finalists competed on September 15th for a chance to advance to the finals. Watch the recap:
The Finalists
RefundWiz (Founder: Simon Karmarkar)
The fastest, easiest and most accurate tax filing solution using AI/ML. Filing your tax return is as simple as 1, 2, 3. 1) Create an account; 2) Take a few pictures of documents; 3) Submit. Let's our algos and the Wiz do the rest while you wait for your refund (if applicable). There is no need for in-person appointments or video conferencing or trying to figure out all those boxes on W-2.
Pixly (Founder: Lee Mills)
Pixly helps architects, engineers, construction (AEC) professionals, facility managers, real estate agents, landscapers, and other pros to collaborate on projects by making it easy to instantly capture, tag, and share project photos from anywhere.
New Frontier Aerospace (Founder: Bill Bruner)
New Frontier Aerospace, Inc. was founded in 2020 with the vision of shortening painfully long international flights, ending the era of sprawling airport runways and eliminating the billion tonnes of greenhouse gases airliners dump into the atmosphere every year with a hypersonic, renewably fueled, vertical landing aircraft that can deliver passengers and urgent cargo anywhere on the planet 10x faster than today's jets - with net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Craitor (Founder: Eric Shnell)
At Craitor we are working to revolutionize the DoD supply chain by making a truly expeditionary high-temperature 3D printer; a rugged, portable, intelligent system designed through collaboration with the US Marine Corps, that can MANUFACTURE military-grade parts from advanced high-temperature plastics, composites, and flexibles, all on a single platform. ANYWHERE.
Spouse-ly (Founder: Monica Fullerton)
Your online marketplace to shop products and services created by military & first responder families. Monica Fullerton quickly learned that the military community was ripe with creators, makers and entrepreneurs. Many of her fellow milspouses were pursuing their passions in between deployments and even as full-time businesses, but there wasn’t a central location to shop and support these deserving entrepreneurs within the military community.
The Prize
The winner of the pitch competition will receive a $100,000 investment from The Veteran Fund. Terms of the investment will be based upon their current financing round as an equity investment or as a capped SAFE Note, with the ability to invest up to $250,000.
Panel of investor judges:
-
Ryan Micheletti - The Veteran Fund, General Partner, The Veteran Fund
-
Guy Filippelli - Squadra Ventures, Managing Partner
-
Mike Sherbakov - The Veteran Fund, General Partner
-
Tim Hsia - Context Ventures, Managing Partner
-
Emily McMahan - Academy Investor Network, General Partner
-
Lisa Song Sutton - The Veteran Fund, General Partner
-
Justin Nahama - The Veteran Fund, General Partner
Learn more about FI's Veteran and Military Family Accelerator here: https://fi.co/veteran