HATCH pitch @ SXSW 2014 Winners Announced
HATCH pitch, the revolutionary startup pitch competition, announced its winners at SXSW Interactive Startup Village at the Hilton Austin Downtown in Austin, TX held March 10th. Each of the 12 finalists had four minutes to pitch their idea before fielding questions from a panel of twelve corporate, angel, and venture investor judges. Seratis, YouEarnedIt, and SmartestK12 were selected by the judges as the best of the best! Finalists were selected from around the world to participate, and each received one-on-one coaching from mentors to refine their presentations prior to competition. Judges evaluated the pitches and determined companies in which they would invest a virtual $1M.
Digital health company, Seratis, took first place. Based in Philadelphia, Seratis is a team transparency and care coordination platform that brings the entire care team around a patient onto one visual network. Austin, Texas based YouEarnedIt, which offers a fresh approach to extrinsic motivation and is grounded in positive psychology, reinforcement, and happiness at work, placed second. Third was SmartestK12 from Los Angeles, a classroom workflow, grading, and analytics tool. Additionally, an “Audience Favorite” award, which was determined by the live HATCH pitch audience text voting, went to YouEarnedIt, and ePatient Finder won the Social Media award for using social media to reach the most fans. Kalin Kassabov, CEO of ProTexting, made the audience and social media awards possible through his company's innovative service.
Dorit Doniviel with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) and Monica Lam of Stanford MobiSocial Computing Laboratory at Stanford University presented the first ever “HATCH pitch challenges” where they each proposed a vision and a challenge to the HATCH pitch community.
“Congratulations to our winners and to all our finalists,” said Greg Wright, HATCH pitch founder. “I was pleased to welcome our first finalists from Africa and Brazil and I am really excited about the “HATCH pitch Challenge” which we plan to make a featured event going forward. I'd like to recognize the incredible team of volunteers and our judges who once again made HATCH pitch magic happen.”
The HATCH pitch judges were Nicole Glaros (Techstars NY), Aya Zook (Microsoft Ventures), John Frankel (ff Venture Capital), Kerry Rupp (DreamIt Ventures), Joel Yarmon (Draper Ventures), Rick Pleczko (Austin Ventures), Unity Stoakes (StartUp Health), Neal Murthy (Indalo Solutions), Alan Ying (Polus Capital), Ted Serbinski (Detroit Ventures), Steve Forte (Telerik), Rami Essaid (Distil Networks and HATCH pitch 2012 winner), and MC Missy Krasner (Box).
Providing an additional opportunity for startups to participate, HATCH pitch and Qukku partnered to host the "Are you HATCH-worthy?" crowd-voted video pitch contest. The top three places went to YouEarnedIt, Live Music Stage (a 2012 HATCH pitch finalist), and SmartestK12.