HATCH Pitch Startup Competition Announces Judges and New Venue
On March 13, 2016, HATCH Pitch returns to Austin with a change to its setup, more offerings, and an amazing roundup of distinguished judges.
New Home
2016 is turning out to be a fantastic year for HATCH pitch. Its alumni have raised over $180 million in funding since pitching at HATCH pitch. Four have had exits and a few of them have opened offices in other countries. The organization has also seen tremendous growth and demand from the startup community. As a result, HATCH pitch is stepping out from under the wing of SXSW Interactive where they have been an official event for the past 4 years. This year HATCH pitch has a really awesome new venue at Ballet Austin, just 3 blocks from the new hot spot, the Marriott Hotel. In addition to the competition, HATCH pitch has added a meetup and an startup expo. The pitch competition itself retains the irreverent, fast paced fun; rock star judges; and high quality of tech startups you’ve come to expect from HATCH. You just won’t need a SXSW badge to get in.
HATCH pitch runs from 11:30am to 6:00pm on March 13, 2016 at Ballet Austin, 501 W 3rd St, Austin, TX (read more here).
Judges
Each judge is an industry expert and has been hand selected for their business and investment experience. HATCH pitch is pleased to announce that Dr Werner Vogels will again be a judge and introduce new judges, Jenny Fielding of Techstars and Jeff Valk of Admetsys (HATCH pitch SXSW 2015 winner).
Werner Vogels
Dr. Werner Vogels is Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com where he is responsible for driving the company's technology vision, which is to continuously enhance the innovation on behalf of Amazon's customers at a global scale. Prior to joining Amazon, he worked as a researcher at Cornell University where he was a principal investigator in several research projects that targeted the scalability and robustness of mission-critical enterprise computing systems. He has held the positions of Research Engineer, VP of Technology and CTO in companies that handle the transition of academic technology into industry. Vogels holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has authored many articles for journals and conferences, most of them on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing.
Jenny Fielding
Jenny Fielding is a Managing Director at Techstars, where she leads both the Fintech and Internet of Things Accelerators in NYC. Prior to joining Techstars, Jenny headed up corporate venture and digital innovation at BBC Worldwide where she made strategic investments and led business development deals. She has also started several companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired. She began her career as a lawyer. You can find Jenny somewhere between NYC, London and San Francisco.
Jeff Valk
Jeff Valk is co-founder and CEO of Admetsys. Prior to taking the helm of Admetsys, he was the company's Chief Technologist, responsible for development of its artificial pancreas system for hospital care and the state-of-the-art visualization and network monitoring technologies that support it. Jeff is a hardware and software engineer by background, specializing in the design of adaptive systems and has technical expertise in areas including machine learning, distributed systems, human-computer interaction and mobile/web technologies. Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and is a member of numerous technical, engineering and research organizations.
Check out more judges at www.hatchpitch.com, and keep an eye out as we announce more judges in the next few days!
About HATCH pitch
HATCH pitch is the revolutionary pitch competition for tech startup companies making life better. Playing to capacity audiences at SXSW Interactive the past four years, HATCH pitch returns to Austin as an independent event on March 13, 2016. Previous winners Distil Networks, RideScout, and Realty Mogul have garnered phenomenal attention from the press and investment communities. Distil received a $1.8 million seed investment from a HATCH pitch judge after winning HATCH pitch 2012. To date, our alumni have raised more than $180 million in funding after pitching at HATCH pitch. To learn more go to www.hatchpitch.com or connect with us on twitter @HATCHPITCH and Facebook at facebook.com/HatchPitch.
For more information, press only:
Greg Wright
(713) 568-7899
greg@hatchpitch.com
For more information:
www.hatchpitch.com