Pitch It | Tomorrow’s best start-ups, Part 2
Pitch It #3 – A website that brings important information and sparks conversation around local schools.
Robert Park
Bringing laws to parents and providing a space to react to issues.
User case: A teacher was illegally posting grades publicly at the school. This issue was known by the parents and a problem in their minds. It wasn’t until the issue was brought up by a journalist that the parents had the legal ammo to go to the school administration and fix the problem.
Key questions from panel:
A great thing for a community to have. Why haven’t you considered the non-profit route?
Started as one, but not sure yet.
I like the use case scenario in your pitch. Those are important. Map out the experience with the use case.
What is the reason to use it everyday? Will it be one of my 10 bookmarks?
Pitch #4 – Debatepedia – Providing the Pros and Cons in a wiki
Brooks Lindsay started Debatepedia in 2006 while at Georgetown.
“Every great non-profit or business must solve a problem”
Problem: It takes way to long for citizens to discover/weigh the pros and cons on a given debate issue.
It takes 20 hours to compile an article due to mini-debates within a larger debate. How can we expect citizens to invest this much time.
There are currently 600 different debate topics on Debatepedia.
The business model is to sell this technology companies that will use it to internally reach conclusions in a well-organized and documented manner.
Key questions from panel:
This requires heavy weight participation. Have you considered light weight participation actions?
Discussion page offer light weight participation.
What does your solution add that’s better than what exists?
This is customizable and the point is to cut down on time wasted recycling arguments.
Pitch It #5 – Imagine Miami – Civic Networking
Corinna J. Moebius was inspired by the goal site 43 Things.
Connects people to purpose and place in Miami. Other sites focus on global change; Imagine Miami focuses on local change. Findability, accessibility and shareability or key to success.
Key questions from panel:
How do you plan on getting this out to the people?
Use Facebook to pull younger people into this site. Grass roots connectors will pull in other users.
Pitch It #6 – Publictivity
Jason Baptiste, CEO and founder
Problem: The current “Organize + Share”methods have problems. Publictivity allows users to do all their online actions with other users in one place.
Publictivity is not…
a collaboration suite
a Roll Your Own Database
an Online Office suite
Revenue:
Premium Hosted Licenses
Premium Support
Developer opportunities
Key questions for panel:
How do people know to use this? How does it spread?
Starts with a few people and spreads through contact lists.
*****
Out of the six pitches, the LaunchBox Digital award went to Corinna J. Moebius of Imagine Miami.
She made a comment on how collaboration is key and thanked her cousin (and fellow pitcher) Jonathan Hendler for his help and support.
Final thought: Although the ideas and concepts tossed out during the intense two hour session were brilliant, it was the passion and enthusiasm of the presenters that made the room exciting.
Note: Due to the 15 minute time limit for each pitch and the lack of materials available, there may be certain points and aspects of the pitches that were inevitability omitted from this post. I welcome and encourage all the presenters to post comments in order to fill in or explain where necessary.
