Our gracious host and professional 'shoosher' Jordan Crook of TC kept the process rolling and the participants moving. The judges included local VCs John Backus (New Atlantic Ventures), Dayna Grayson (NEA), David Hall (Revolution Ventures), Mark Levine (Core Capital Partners), and accompanied by TC's Leena Rao & Sarah Perez. And so the evening began with some great, and some less impressive, pitches.
TechCrunch was gracious enough to present the top three teams with access to TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and first place even gets to set up a table.
Notable observations:
-some startups could use a branding team with such questionable name selections as Crudzilla, Qazzoo, or wiacts.
-Props to the TrendPo guy's shirt: 'I got 99 problems but a pitch ain't one.' He delivered a confident and straight-forward, albeit a bit mechanical, pitch.
-Props to TechCrunch for not only organizing the meetup, but also hooking it up with a few drinks.
-Not a single female came out on the pitch to represent, which is a shame.
Audience Selection: SpeakerBlast harnesses multiple smart phones to simultaneously play the same audio in sync. Cool concept, questionable application in the real world.
3rd Place: GreaterPlaces is an online community for urban design with plenty of B2G potential. Think Houzz for urban planners and developers.
2nd Place: API Fortress came out with swagger and beer in hand. Good interaction with both the judges and audience, as well as a complete grasp of the subject matter. How else would you know how to test to see if your APIs are working? They're probably not.
1st Place: The Lithosphere Software pitch was an interesting one that eventually came out on top. With the pitch having to be restarted about three times, you could the speaker wasn't comfortable in front of a big crowd. But he's running with an idea that is a hot-button issue in the tech community these days - patents and patent trolls. The PatDek platform provides an easily searchable and shareable repository of patent documentation, which would benefit a ton of people in the industry. This is something that connected with one specific judge, as he recently spent $1.6M on a trial brought on by a patent troll that was actually won by the defendant. Sometimes you don't have to be the best presenter, you just have to present the most viable idea that is applicable to the current atmosphere. Congrats!
I'll be sure to keep up with these startups, and so should you. Be on the lookout for another TechCrunch event coming near your town, and sharpen those pitching skills. Cheers!