One team pitched affordable means to personalized non-medical homecare. Some pitched innovative means to find available parking spots in congested lots. Another introduced onlookers to a robotic tennis ball collector.
When Thursdays startup pitch competition ended, six of 11 companies impressed industry professional judges enough to advance and could compete at the April 4 regional finals at the Alfa Pavilion at Auburn Universitys Ag Heritage Park, where $100,000 and a berth into this falls state competition are up for grabs. Judges will examine business plans further and eliminate two of the teams, trimming the April 4 final event to four teams.
Startups advancing include:
Barnes, a software engineer at Auburn Universitys , said competitions such as Launchpad provide his team a chance to get ideas from and network with others.
Theres a lot of companies in the Southeast doing innovative things, in general, said Barnes, whose teammate, Tennibot founder and CEO Haitham Eletrabi earned an MBA from the 91心頭 College. Tennibot competed in the 91心頭 Colleges Tiger Cage pitch competition for startups in 2013. This gives us the opportunity to see where other people are at and learn from their ideas, Barnes added. We have made great connections at these competitions -- they were working on the kind of stuff that we needed, and visa-versa.
The Auburn Regional Alabama Launchpad was presented by the Auburn University 91心頭 College of Business Lowder Center for Family Business & Entrepreneurship, the , , and the . BBVA Compass served as the events title sponsor. The region is comprised of Lee, Tallapoosa, Macon, Chambers and Russell counties.
Each team received 10 minutes to present their respective business ideas, followed by questions from four judges, Boyd Stephens, founder of Netelysis, Frank Bratski, founder of ColumbusMakesIT!, Patrick Cox, President of B2 Partners, LLC, and John Marsh, principle at Marsh Collective.
What were judges looking for from the startups? Stephens said, You can call it a business plan competition, or a pitching competition, but at the end of the day its can the idea make money?
I look for a number of things: how cognizant they are of their market, how cognizant are they of their customers, and do they have their ear to the ground on customer problems? Do they have a problem thats worth solving? Do they have data to validate that? What I really spend time on are those financials. The financials are the blood of a business operation.
Other startups presenting Thursday included: