Speakers
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX
Elon Musk is the Chairman, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla Motors, driving the development of Tesla’s product strategy, product development and design efforts. Elon has been involved in key product decisions since the start of Tesla Motors, co-leading design of the Tesla Roadster, for which he won an Index and a Global Green award, the latter presented by Mikhail Gorbachev. Elon is also the CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Chairman of the board of Solar City. Previously, Elon co-founded Zip2 and PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.3 billion.
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com
Jason McCabe Calacanis is the Founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine. Prior to Mahalo.com’s launch in May, 2007, he was an “Entrepreneur in Action” at Sequoia Capital, a position he held since December 2006. Jason co-founded and was the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., a network of popular weblogs that was sold to AOL in November 2005. Upon joining AOL, he was appointed senior vice president. In addition, he was named general manager of AOL’s Netscape. Prior to forming Weblogs Inc., Jason was the founder of Rising Tide Studios, which sold its flagship publication to Dow Jones.
Sarah Lacy, Award-Winning Journalist and Author
Sarah Lacy is an award winning journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about nearly everything in Silicon Valley, from the largest publicly traded companies to the tiniest startups. She is the editor-at-large for TechCrunch.com and author of the critically-acclaimed book, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0″ (Gotham Books, May 2008). Lacy is now working on her second book, which is about entrepreneurship in the developing world.
Showcase Champion
SeePort makes video wifi devices and software that connect people with live, real time video and chat. Their stand alone, persistent, consumer-oriented devices are loaded with patented video software and a cloud-based hosting solution, offering the highest quality video telepresence on the market. SeePort is building prototypes and plans to release the product by CES 2011. They have also formed a marketing and sales partnership with a major multinational US corporation that produces imaging, photographic materials and equipment. We are raising a seed round to complete software development, and industrial, electrical and mechanical design. A series A round will follow.
Runner-Up
Aprendi Learning provides software for universities to build, grow and manage large online classes and degree programs. Our technology provides effective instructional design that sets consistent standards for online classes, thus allowing universities to easily offer course credit across a network of top-tier schools. Aprendi is currently developing our product and pitching pilot programs at universities along the West coast, and we have generated interest from top Research I universities. We are currently raising $500,000 in convertible debt.
Finalists
- Ergolution: We integrate injury reduction practices into the lives of knowledge workers and efficiently manage employee injury data, which reduces expenses. US companies spend an estimated 150B on work related injuries. We are the first to combine a business process system with an ergonomic injury reduction platform and compliance solution. Our product is close to completion and is currently in user acceptance testing. We are looking to raise $500K for sales, marketing and a defensible patent strategy.
- FatPencil:FatPencil delivers web-based and mobile experience logging, first to aviators, then expanding to other professionals in the transportation industry. FatPencil beats the competition by combining cloud-based event logging and mobile applications that allow the professional to log the event while it’s on their mind. We are raising an Angel round of $500k to develop and deploy enhanced web services and mobile applications for FatPencil Logbook, and accelerate development of our B2B offering.
- Geotoko: Geotoko is a powerful campaign management platform that allows businesses to run contests and sweepstakes using location-based services (LBS) like foursquare, gowalla, brightkite etc. After officially launching at Techcrunch Disrupt in May 2010, Geotoko has over 1000 businesses signed up, including some of the leading fortune 500 brands. Geotoko is currently in closed beta working with our launch partners to set up and run successful location-based campaigns. Geotoko is looking to raise a $500,000 on a $2.5M pre-money valuation.
- Liv: Liv allows you to collect and organize all your favorite products from all over the Internet to one wish list to compare, share, and store for later. By leveraging users’ existing friend lists, you can recommend and share products with your friends Product recommendations from friends is the pinnacle of advertising and marketing. Liv is looking to raise $400K to hire very talented engineers, a social media/fashion blogger specialist, and to keep Liv’s servers running efficiently and quickly.
- MediaShares: MediaShares’ U.S. Patented and SEC-compliant Business Method for Crowdfunding allows ANY company to raise major funding through an online IPO by selling NASDAQ listed stock on its own Web site to its customers, fans, or affinity group. We have perfected a business method, system and software to combine funding with social marketing. Our first NASDAQ Capital Market offering to finance a major feature film by selling shares to movie fans will soon be underway. The company also has a LOI from a NASCAR Team. Immediate funding secured will pay to complete the first four online IPO’s in-house (if $3.0 MM).
- ShareSquare: Like bit.ly for the real world, ShareSquare allows marketers to integrate ecommerce & online content with real world advertising using a special type of barcode and the consumer’s mobile. A self-serve authoring & management platform enables the creation of a mobile optimized ShareSquare campaign in minutes, for FREE. Subscription analytics drive the revenue model instead of upfront setup costs, encouraging rapid adoption. ShareSquare is raising a $150k seed round.
- TouristWay: TouristWay is a web application designed for independent operators that want to build their own travel portal and sell their original travel ideas directly. In other words: Expedia in a box. TouristWay has been officially released, over 200 users per month sign up for our free-trial and 3% of them purchase TouristWay for an average subscription fee of $ 100/month. TouristWay is looking to raise 500,000 USD to be used for development and improved customer support.
- TribeVibe: TribeVibe tracks and measures the impact of content across the real-time social web, without having to manually aggregate and analyze it. By acting as a common gateway between publishing systems, analytics and social media, Tribevibe tells you in real-time how content is being talked about around the social web. We are ready to launch and scale to our goal of 100,000 users before turning on the Pro paid version. $500k seed to fund operations and further development through the alpha and beta phases over the next twelve months.