Last week, we had the chance to work closely with Inc. Magazine/Events to host a FundingUniverse CrowdPitch event at their national GROWCO Conference in Orlando. Overall, the event was a huge success and we had a lot of fun. Here are a few highlights:
- 4 awesome companies that pitched to a crowd of 450+ audience members. Companies included:
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- TripWare — cool technology that books your entire trip & creates an expense report in 3.5 mins.
- Regreet — a green greeting card company that allows you to re-use greeting cards and track their journey online
- Xit Poll (Cleva Technologies) — kiosk-like portal that takes surveys from customers in a retail location
- HighPoints Learning — online technology that provides affordable tutoring to k-12 students — WINNER OF THE $50k in prizes that we gave away!
- Star-packed panel of heavy hitters included:
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- Norm Brodsky, founder of CitiStorage Inc (and sold for $100M+), and columnist for Inc’s Street Smarts
- Michael E. Gerber, author of the best-selling book “The E-Myth“
- Steve Mercil, Founder/CEO of the largest angel group in the world (RAIN Source Capital)
- Andy Craig, Co-Founder of Elevator Speech
- CJ Wilson, angel investor and investment banker from Florida
It was a lot of fun to see the FundingUniverse brand gain so much traction in the national spotlight. Michael & Norm had a great time on the panel — in fact, they were having a “Grumpy Old Men”-type -spat in front of the audience which made it fun and interesting.
After the FundingUniverse CrowdPitch, Alex and I had several discussions with Michael Gerber and his team and are excited about some potential partnership opportunities that may arise their. Michael is a brilliant man that knows the world of small business.
