• About
• Sponsorship
• Programs and Events
• Membership
• Annual Contests
  • Business Plan Contest
  • Five-Minute Pitch Contest
• Newsletter
• Business Resources
• Join Our E-mail List
• Forms
• Related Sites
  • WPI Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • WPI School of Business

Five-Minute Pitch Contest

Congratulations to the 2010 Winners!

  

Judges' Winner:  VitaSpider.com (currently beta product development stage) won the $2,500 prize awarded by the expert panel of judges.  Nicolas Xu, CEO of VitaSpider.com, described the company as a SAAS network focused on the financial accounting-related process automation. Xu believes accounting departments in small and mid-sized businesses are a waste of resources and with proper data integration and service aggregation, he can reduce accounting costs by at least 50% for SME, meanwhile increasing accuracy and reliability of their financial information.

 

Audience's Winner:  EndoSphere Surgical, Inc. won over the audience and collected a $500 prize.  Mel Prenovitz, CEO of EndoSphere Surgical, Inc., talked about how Laparoscopic surgery is best performed with a "triangulated" angle of view of the surgical site for depth perception and hand-eye coordination, typically accomplished by an endoscope. The image is viewed from one perspective while the instruments enter from another. The EndoSphere approach eliminates incision ports while allowing surgeons to regain full visual field with enhanced dexterity and improved cosmetic outcomes.

2010 Presenting Finalists:

• Don Montgomery, '83, - WinGreen Marketing Systems, LLC
• Doug Greenwald - Relay Technology Management
• Brian Chan - mobiLIFE, Inc.
• Mel Prenovitz - EndoSphere Surgical, Inc.
• Elena Polyakova - Graphene Laboratories, Inc.
• Uri Mariash - GeoSapia
• Jeff Chin - Hubbub Technology
• David Tschirpke - WASP Audio Technologies
• Nicolas Xu - VitaSpider.com
• Bill Zimmer - Server Technology, LLC

 

The Pitch Contest has become an integral part of the Venture Forum's commitment to fostering entrepreneurship and the growth of technology-based businesses, and is designed to generate investment interest for participating entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs contemplating, starting, running or operating early-stage technology ventures are invited to apply.

We are grateful for the contest committee members hard work in organizing everything from this web page, to selecting judges and sponsors.  We thank Dan Young, Steve Marini, and Justin Nesbit for their commitment to making this program a success this year.

This year's contest sponsors are:

Judges

Edmund J. Walsh, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield and Sacks, P.C.

Steve Snyder, Partner and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Gesmer Updegrove, LLP

Avi Goldberg, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at GreatPoint Energy

Anita Ballesteros, Ph.D., Licensing Officer at University of Massachusetts Medical School
Office of Technology Management

Graham Brooks, Principal of .406 Ventures

Applications

Applications are collected online. The deadline is April 30, 2010.  Please fill in the application form.

Process / Guidelines

The Pitch Contest consists of two rounds of selection.  In the first round, applications are evaluated anonymously by a group of area business leaders.  Ten finalists will be selected from among the applicants and invited to compete at the Venture Forum's final meeting of the season, scheduled for 5:30 on June 8, 2010. 

In the final round, each company will be given five minutes to pitch their business to a panel of expert judges and the Forum's audience.  Each presentation will be followed by a two minute open discussion between the judges and the entrepreneur.  The judges will then rate each business and the audience will do the same.  Once all the pitches are complete, the judges will select the winner of the top prize in a brief and closed deliberation.  An audience prize will be awarded based on the voting results.

In both rounds of the Pitch Contest, companies will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

•         Business model: How the business generates revenue and profit.

•         Innovation: How innovation is applied in the business (e.g., the technology associated with the product/service, how a product/service is marketed etc.).

•         Market opportunity: The size of the market, the ability of the company to capture market share and generate profit out of the market share.

•         Competitive advantage: What allows the company to compete successfully in the market place (e.g., Value Proposition, IP strategy). 

•         Leadership Team: The quality, breadth and experience of the team (management, advisory board, etc.).

In the final round, the judges and audience also will evaluate the entrepreneur's presentation skills and overall performance.  To get a better sense for what makes an effective five-minute pitch, we encourage you to view the video links in the Prior Contests section to see the winning pitches from the past two years. 

Contest Timeline
Process	Date	Who
Entry deadline.	April 30, 2010	Technology-based entrepreneurs
First-round screening	May 3-7, 2010	All entrants
Finals notification	May 12, 2010	Selected finalists
Pitch contest. Open to public.	June 8, 2010	Finalists

Past Contests

June 2009 Winners

Number of Finalists: 10

Judges' Winner:  Shorepower Technologies of Portland Oregon won the $2,500 prize awarded by the expert panel of judges.  Joe Licari, Director of Eastern Operations for Shorepower, described the company's deployment of electrified parking space technology to provide truck stop electrification and power to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with the goal of lowering emissions and reducing maintenance costs.

Watch the ShorePower Technologies presentation video

Audience's Winner:  ColdStor Data, Inc. of Walpole, New Hampshire won over the audience and collected a $500 prize.  Joel Love, CTO and founder of ColdStor, showcased how the company's long-term digital archive data storage technology could decrease storage costs by 70 percent while increasing accessibility and security.

Watch the ColdStor Data presentation video

2009 Judges (descriptions as of 2009):

Justin Aborn, CTO & Chief Scientist of General Compression, Inc.

Robert J. Crowley, President, Massachusetts Technology Development Corp.

Laura Ring, Vice President of Strategic Relations, Castile Ventures

Patrick R.H. Waller, Shareholder, Wolf Greenfield, PC

W. Lambert (Bert) Welling, Managing Director at MedTech Capital, Inc.

Link to June 2009 Newsletter

June 2008 Winners

Number of Finalists: 10

Judges' Winner:  TBS Technologies of Holliston, Massachusetts won the $1,000 prize awarded by the expert panel of judges.  Norman Strate, the President of TBS Technologies, described a tiny machine that generates and disperses chlorine dioxide gas to eradicate dangerous microbes in health care facilities (and anywhere else dangerous microorganisms may live).

Audience's Winner:  Owl Power Company of Boylston, Massachusetts won over the audience and collected a $500 prize.  James Peret, President and CEO of Owl Power, explained how his company manufactures, installs and operates Vegawatt™ machines, which provide electricity and hot water in restaurants fueled by the restaurant's own waste vegetable oil and grease.

Watch the June 2008 Competition video  

Judges (descriptions as of 2008):

William Cowen, Managing Partner at Long River Ventures

Chris Golden, President, Mission Critical Advisors and Vice Chairman, Boynton Angels

Steven Henry, Shareholder, Wolf Greenfield, P.C.

Janice Shields, Managing Partner and Executive Vice President, Shields & Company, Inc.

Mark Solomon, Principal, Hamilton Brook Smith & Reynolds, P.C.

Link to June 2008 Newsletter

Link to September 2008 Newsletter

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: June 17, 2010 09:56:53