{"id":1511,"date":"2010-08-18T07:23:58","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T14:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2010-08-18T07:23:58","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T14:23:58","slug":"go-seattle-the-innovate-100-pitch-slam-at-pii2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2010\/08\/18\/go-seattle-the-innovate-100-pitch-slam-at-pii2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Seattle! The Innovate 100 Pitch Slam at pii2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pii2010<\/a>pii2010<\/a> (privacy identity innovation) got off to a fine start yesterday with a great opening reception and the Innovate 100 Seattle Pitch Slam<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 While a few of the participants were from the Bay Area, Seattle-area startups Optify, InternMatch, and Pathable took the top three spots, with Tweetajob and IdeaScale also representing well.\u00c2\u00a0 Go Seattle!<\/p>\n

And props to the Innovate 100 team and pii2010 for getting a more diverse group of participants than we often see in events like this.\u00c2\u00a0 As well as good racial diversity, two of the speakers were women — quite a contrast to the all-male feel of TechStars, Y Combinator, or last spring’s NWEN First Look Forum.<\/p>\n

Shameless plug: speaking of the First Look Forum<\/a>, we’ve extended the application deadline for the fall event to August 23<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re an early-stage startup, please check it out<\/a>!\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re thinking of applying, there’s some tips here<\/a> and here<\/a>.
\n<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The pitch slam started with a one-minute “Quick Pitch” competition, with Secret123, Puzzazz, Open Mobile, aNEWSme, wishpot, and InternMatch competing for the last open spot in the finals.\u00c2\u00a0 I was impressed by how well most of the presenters conveyed what they were doing in just 60 seconds.\u00c2\u00a0 The crowd went wild after InternMatch’s dramatic reveal at the end of their minute: the person giving the presentation was actually an intern!\u00c2\u00a0 Gotta love that. \u00c2\u00a0 So it wasn’t at all surprising that they moved on to the finals.<\/p>\n

And a lot of people I talked to thought InternMatch should have been the overall winners as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing against Optify, but I really felt like they shouldn’t have been allowed into the competition: they’ve already raised $2.1 million from Madrona, where their CEO used to be a venture capitalist.*\u00c2\u00a0 Ah well.\u00c2\u00a0 Such is life.<\/p>\n

InternMatch’s business is matching students with internships.\u00c2\u00a0 In his five-minute presentation their CEO Andrew Maguire made some great points about the strategic importance of interns and why the area’s so ripe for reinvention.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got a large pilot in Washington State that’s going well, and the very young founding team clearly gets the challenge from the interns’ perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 One big question they’ll face is what prevents Monster.com or another large company from getting into the space.\u00c2\u00a0 On the other hand that’s also an opportunity: if they can get out there and establish their brand and technology, they could be a very tempting acquisition target.\u00c2\u00a0 During the presentation, Cathy Brooks tweeted that Andrew is somebody to watch, and I certainly agree.<\/p>\n

Tweetajob is another company with an impressive CEO facing a similar challenge\/opportunity.\u00c2\u00a0 Carmen Hudson (a former recruiter at Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft) summed up how Twitter really changes the game for job searches both for companies and for job seekers — and how much people on Twitter dislike “job spam”.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 She describes their technology as being uniquely able to get people information on the jobs that they’re interested in, and applying more broadly than just Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 If so, they’ve got a chance to carve out a nice business, or perhaps be a key feature for a larger company.<\/p>\n

So, a very good event. Sarterus has videos<\/a>, and my tweetstream<\/a> has some details if you scroll back.<\/p>\n

pii2010 continues today and tomorrow; if you can’t be there in person, you can follow along on the #pii2010 hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0 Seattle Geek Week goes on through the weekend, and the hashtag is #seagw.\u00c2\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

jon<\/p>\n

* a good example of yet another way that it’s easier for guys to get funding then women<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

pii2010 (privacy identity innovation) got off to a fine start yesterday with a great opening reception and the Innovate 100 Seattle Pitch Slam.\u00c2\u00a0 While a few of the participants were from the Bay Area, Seattle-area startups Optify, InternMatch, and Pathable took the top three spots, with Tweetajob and IdeaScale also representing well.\u00c2\u00a0 Go Seattle! And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,182],"class_list":["post-1511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-diversity","tag-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}