The Companies voted The Top 50 Nationwide" in Largest Ever Competition Judged by Leading Venture Capital Funds & Angel Investors: What are They Doing Now?
Pitching Across America(TM), FundingPosts Annual Venture Capital competition, launches its Second Year with Updates on Last Years Winners
New York (PRWEB) June 16, 2005 -- FundingPost (http://www.fundingpost.com/) has proudly announced the start of its second annual Pitching Across America(TM) competition. FundingPost, which has been introducing entrepreneurs to investors for over 4 years, established the competition last year in which 140 Venture Capital Funds and Angel Investors participated as judges, voting on 400 business summaries from emerging companies nationwide. It was the largest Venture Capital competition ever organized. The Pitching Across America competition is significant because it helps Venture Capital and Angel Investors quickly identify worthwhile investment opportunities. The competition also helps provide entrepreneurs with useful feedback about the quality and professionalism of their pitch to investors. FundingPost expects to duplicate its success from last years Pitching Across America event again this year. To enter your company in the Pitching Across America competition, please visit: http://www.fundingpost.com/pitch-america.asp
The emerging companies will be evaluated on a scale of 1 to 10. Judging criteria consisted of several key points including: the professionalism of the written summary, current stage of development (customers, revenue), competitive advantage and need in the marketplace, feasibility for success, and whether the company is "VentureWorthy(TM)."
"We are thrilled to be running Pitching Across America again this year. The response and the level of interest from both the Venture and Angel community and the entrepreneurs who participated in Pitching Across America(TM) last year was tremendous," said Joe Rubin, Director, FundingPost, "Both the investors and entrepreneurs really saw the value in the competition. Also, we are proud of the progress that our winners have made. Pitching Across America has really helped it participating companies grow."
Being the national winner of Pitching Across America was a terrific boost for Remote Play," said Gideon Naim, CFO of Remote Play, Inc.. FundingPosts competition got us in front of a host of different types of investors, from Angel investors and Venture Capitalists to Investment Bankers. Certainly the publicity we received from Pitching Across America helped us secure our Series A round of financing."
The winners of last years Pitching Across America competition garnered support from the publicity they gained in the competition. Some updates on the participating companies include:
National Winner -- Remote Play, Inc.
National Winner Remote Play, Inc. has gone on to have an oversubscribed Series A round from Angel investors having won the Pitching Across America competition. The company is getting ready to release two new products and it has three customers. In addition, Remote Play, Inc. has solid orders on the books and the company is moving towards reaching its revenue targets.
BioSystem Development LLC -- Wisconsin Winner
BioSystem Development LLC has raised $75,000 in a friends & family" angel round over the last year, as well as an $11,500 grant from the State of Wisconsin to help defray patenting expenses. The company now has a working 'breadboard prototype of its instrument system and prototype injection molded consumables (which are the money-making 'razorblades, or replaceable annuity stream portion of the product). BioSystem Development LLC is currently completing its utility patent filings and building a field-worthy demonstration prototype that it will take out to potential customers as soon as it is ready for demonstration to secure some initial orders. The company is still trying to raise a $750,000 angel round, which will be used to complete the development of a commercial product that the company intends to launch in Q2 2006.
Ethidium Health Systems -- Pennsylvania Winner
Ethidium Health Systems founded with the mission of developing Internet and wireless software systems that empower medical professionals to improve the quality of healthcare delivery, successfully raised $1.2M in February from angel investors and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. The company is now mobilizing to launch its product into the market.
Fat Spaniel Technologies - California Winner
Fat Spaniel Technologies is proud to announce that the five leading OEMs in the solar industry: Sharp Electronics, Shell Solar, BP Solar, Kyocera and RWE Schoot Solar, all are customers of the company. Fat Spaniel Technologies closed a Series Friends & Family II round of $1M in March 2005. Currently the company is coming out of May 2005 with its highest bookings month ever and is still seeking expansion capital in a Series A Preferred Fundraising. On the product front, Fat Spaniel Technologies keeps innovating and its product is newly recommended by the California Energy Commission as the product to manage performance based incentives in California.
Ingenuus Software, Inc. -- Texas Winner
Ingenuus Software has been growing and is getting some traction in its market. The company raised $450,000 in bridge funding last year and will be releasing Version 6.0 of its product by the end of 2005. Ingenuus just signed on its third new customer, and is in the process of negotiating a corporate license worth more than $1M annually.
Parallel Computers Technology Inc. - Pennsylvania Winner
Pennsylvania Winner Parallel Computers Technology launched ICX-UDSDB Scaler V3.0 early this year. The company, which develops and markets middleware for building high performance and high availability information processing systems, closed three deals at the end of 2004. Currently the company has 20+ prospects in the pipeline for 2005. Parallel Computers Technology is in the middle of raising its first $1M in outside capital.
PRO Barrier Engineering LLC -- Pennsylvania
In the past year, PRO Barrier Engineering LLC has raised approximately $150K and launched two new products at its industry's largest trade show. PRO Barrier, which designs and builds anti-terrorism vehicle barriers and provides related perimeter security services, such as training and documentation, expects to close on a military base perimeter security contract with the US Navy shortly.
Pitching Across America also received tremendous accolades from its investors judges last year. "FundingPost's latest Pitching Across America event was stellar," said Bill Funcannon, Partner, OVP Venture Partners. "As a judge representing the top-tier fund in the Pacific Northwest, I was impressed by the 50 companies selected from a list of more than 400 entries. The start-ups chosen for the final round represented real balance of companies between earlier- and later- stage investing. There is a natural mix of winners from industry segments based on market opportunities, and a balance between risk and reward for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs alike."
"The FundingPost competition provided an efficient vehicle in which a busy VC could quickly evaluate many investment opportunities," said Daniel Penberthy, Rand Capital. "Much has been said about entrepreneurs always having their 'elevator speech' ready. Well, this is the 'elevator of today' and entrepreneurs need to be able to summarize their business opportunity in a few paragraphs instead of minutes, if they are to be successful in today's fundraising environment."
About FundingPost
For over four years FundingPost has worked with thousands of Angel and Venture Capital Investors and Entrepreneurs. FundingPost has hosted over 5,000 CEOs and 600 Venture Funds at events in 15 cities nationwide, as well as providing a quarterly Dealflow magazine and a deal-exchange Website that has, on average, seen an introduction of an Investor to an Entrepreneur every business day since its inception. FundingPosts mission to reach investors and entrepreneurs in every medium possible -- both online and offline, and it is experiencing strong growth as the venture capital markets continue to improve worldwide. For more information: http://www.fundingpost.com or contact Keith Henry at 203-659-6649.
Note to editors: Please contact us at press@fundingpost.com for additional information or to schedule interviews with FundingPost or any of the participants or judges of the competition.
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