The 11th Founder Showcase, which took place last Wednesday July 25th in Mountain View, featured the most tightly contested pitch competition we have ever had. The pitches had higher judge scores than any of our previous 10 events, and the competition resulted in a tie for first place between Selligy and Kindara that ultimately had to be decided by a show of hands.
In the end, Selligy took home the Grand Prize via the tie-breaker. Selligy is a mobile service for salespeople that ties all the information a salesperson needs into a beautiful and easy-to-use experience. Selligy blogged about winning here, and below is the video of Co-Founder & CEO Nilay Patel's winning pitch:
Also in first place, but losing the tie-breaker, was Kindara, represented on stage by Co-Founder Kati Bicknell. A Graduate of the New York Founder Institute, Kindara is a fertility platform that helps women manage their reproductive health and get pregnant using personalized data and support. Here is the video of Kati's pitch:
Other companies who contended in the Pitch Competition were BetterWeekdays, Cont3nt.com, Family Play, FanKix, Gridblaze, and Thotz.co, and winning the Demo Table Competition and CrowdPitch Competitions were;
- AppFlow - AppFlow is crowdsourcing app discovery.
- FanDrop - A network to help people discover and share the most relevant content on the web by accurately capturing any part of their browsing experience.
- iRewardChart - A platform for parents to reward their children for the tasks and chores they perform.
- UpOut - A curated experience discovery platform to help social, adventurous people discover the coolest experiences happening in their city with both curated and personalized recommendations.
And, as usual, we had an amazing lineup of judges from the top venture firms in Silicon Valley;
George Zachary, General Partner at Charles River Ventures
George Zachary joined CRV in 2004, bringing more than 17 years of operating and investing experience in computing and consumer technology. Zachary focuses on building services and software technology companies, and he's led CRV's investments in Twitter, Yammer, Millennial Media, Cloudshare, Geni, SocialMedia, Metaplace, and Scribd (co-led with Bill Tai).
Jed Katz, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners
One of the pioneers of Internet commerce, Jed has spent his 18-year career developing, advising and investing in early stage tech ventures. Jed also served on the Technology, Telecom & Media advisory group for President Barack Obama's campaign. Prior to Javelin, Jed was a MD of DFJ Gotham Ventures, where he was selected in the "Silicon Alley 100."
James Cham, Principal at Trinity Ventures
James joined Trinity in 2010, with over 5 years of investing experience in consumer services, enterprise software and digital media companies as a VP at Bessemer Venture Partners. While at Bessemer, James was a board member at CrowdFlower and Open Candy, and observer at LifeLock, ReputationDefender, and BillShrink.
Rob Coneybeer, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures
Rob is a Co-founder and Managing Director of Shasta Ventures. Rob is particularly interested in Mobile & Wireless, Technology Applications, and Infrastructure. Prior to Shasta, he was a partner at New Enterprise Associates, where he led 15 investments. He also helped build the first EchoStar spacecraft at Martin Marietta.
Chris Gottschalk, Vice President at Blumberg Capital 
Chris has over 8 years of experience as an investor, entrepreneur, operational executive and investment banker within the technology space. Prior to Blumberg, Chris worked at Menlo Ventures where he pursued investment opportunities in mobile, internet, gaming, software, and e-commerce.
