Congratulations to Cat Wine, “Premium cat drinks with catnip in every sip “for securing first place at the 2015 Jacksonville Startup Weekend! More than 17 Coaches, 3 judges, 4 organizers, 3 volunteers, 5 special guests and 10 sponsors participated in the 54-hour event held Mar. 6-8 at the University of North Florida, Student Union Building.
Event featured 10 ideas pitched, and 6 Teams went to next round working tirelessly over 54 Hrs. Winners received prizes worth more than $20,000 of in-kind services to help them launch their new businesses. The grand finale on Sunday (Mar 8th), attended by Sponsors, Mentors, Judges, Speakers and Participants was well received.
The 3 judges were: Ted Willich, CoFounder/CEO of NLP Logix; Craig Mandeville, Founder/CEO of Forcura; and Doug M Kravet, Principal at Heritage Capital Group.
Yash Nath, president and CEO of local business accelerator iStartJax, also the lead organizer of Jacksonville Startup Weekend, states that participants are trying to solve real world problems by leveraging technology and that explains why the startup themes for 2015 were diverse: Hospitality, Pets, Food/Entertainment, Analytics and Search Engine. Mr. Nath states that he is encouraged with the positive feedback he has received from the judges and mentors on viability of some of the startups pitched during the event.
The top 3 winners are:
1st Place – Cat Wine: Premium cat drinks with catnip in every sip
2nd Place – BrewU: Tap into your inner brewer!
3rd Place – Boomerang: Customer relationship and brand management tool for servers and bartenders
Boomerang was also chosen as the crowd favorite team.
The top three teams from the 2014 Startup Weekend will receive the following as their prizes.
• Consultancy services (limited hours) for legal and intellectual property(IP)
• Consultancy services (limited hours) for Sales Contract, Entity Formation
• Consultancy services (limited hours) for Business Plan
• Consultancy services (limited hours) for Sales Plan & projections
• Consultancy services (limited hours) for Trademark, design mark, copy rights, licensing agreements
• Tickets to Startup Series Workshop – SBDC
• CoWork Jax membership for top 3 winners (limited to 1 – 2 person)
• Office productivity software – BinaryNow
• Media opportunities on leading local publications
• Obtain feedback on your ideas (March 12) from Silicon Valley Entrepreneur - Sramana Mitra - 1 M/1M
• Google Cloud Platform - $300 credit
• Free .CO Domain
• Amazon Web Services - $100 credit
Business Journal coverage
bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2015/03/09/would-be-jacksonville-entrepreneur-wants-to-get.html
Advantage Business magazine coverage
advantagebizmag.com/blog/2015/03/09/startup-weekend-winners-announced/
