AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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 16th. Admetsys, Astroprint, and Plum were selected by the judges as the best of the best! 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.
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.
Admetsys took first place, Astroprint took second place and Plum took third place. Their prize packages included hosting services, investor meetings, media exposure, consultations, and mentoring. Prize donations came from companies Intel, FF Ventures, FKA, Microsoft BizSpark, Amazon, High Tech Texan, Tech Ranch, Wearable World and Prezi.
GE Oil & Gas and NASA both presented the second annual “HATCH pitch challenges” where they each proposed a vision and a challenge to the HATCH pitch community.
“We are excited to be celebrating our fourth event with HATCH pitch, all of our returning judges and our winners Admetsys, Astroprint and Plum. It’s great to see that we continue to attract talent from around the world and showcasing these innovations here at SXSW Interactive,” says Greg Wright founder of HATCH pitch. “We are also celebrating that over 75% of our past winners have received funding.”
The HATCH pitch judges were Aza Zook (Microsoft Ventures), Balaji Gopinath (Evolution Labs), Ben Wilson (GE), Jared Stasik (Detroit Venture Partners), Joel Yarmon (Draper Associates), John Frankel (ff Venture Capital), Jon Karlen (FKA), Kerry Rupp (Dreamit Ventures), Nicole Garos (TechStars New York), Rami Essaid (Distil Networks), Rick Pleczko (symplr), Steve Forte (Fresco Capital), Lyne Chou (Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers), Sumeet Jain (Intel Capital), Patrick Eggen (Qualcomm Ventures) and Werner Vogels (Amazon).
Providing an additional opportunity for startups to participate, HATCH pitch and Mosofy partnered to host the crowd favorite and social Twitter contests. The top places went to Ambix for social favorite, Procyrion for both audience favorite and Prezi favorite.
About HATCH pitch
HATCH pitch is the revolutionary pitch competition for tech startup companies making life better. After playing to capacity audiences at SXSW Interactive in Austin the past three years, HATCH pitch returned to SXSW Interactive on March 16, 2015. 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! HATCH pitch is volunteer-run and supported by sponsors like Blue Lance, Osha Liang, Qukku, Mbira group, The Brandsoup Agency, Prezi, Culture Pilot, Mosofy, .AWS Activate, ff, Microsoft BizSmart, Intel, ff Frankel, FKA, Tech Ranch, Rackspace, Zendesk, Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator, foundersuite and Wearable World. To learn more go to www.hatchpitch.com or connect with us on Twitter @HATCHpitch and Facebook at facebook.com/HatchPitch.
For more information:
http://www.hatchpitch.com/pitch-competition-sxsw-2014/
This announcement on our blog
http://www.hatchpitch.com/2014/sxsw-2014/sxsw-2014-winners/