1776 Announces Top of the Heap for Challenge Cup New York Region

New York, NY (PRWEB) December 12, 2013

Today, 1776, an incubator platform located a few blocks from the White House, in partnership with the Center for Social Innovation, a co-working space, community center, and incubator for entrepreneurs, announced the winners of Challenge Cup for the New York region.

Challenge Cup is a startup competition spanning 16 cities around the world and culminating in Washington, D.C. to find the world’s most promising startups tackling education, healthcare, energy, and city challenges.

Twenty-four startups, distilled from 35 regional applications, competed during the evening of December 11th, event with more than 140 attendees. The competitors also participated in an accelerator program for the two days preceding the competition.

“New York City is one of the most spectacular places to be around the holidays and the innovation and entrepreneurial savvy that the regions startups brought to the Challenge Cup last night made it better than ever,” said Evan Burfield, co-founder of 1776. “We congratulate the New York competitors on a great round of pitches and we look forward to seeing the winners compete in May.”

The regional winners include:

•     Education: Pathgather – A social learning environment that motivates and accelerates personal development. Employees can share achievements, set public goals, and recommend helpful resources.
•     Energy: Simply Grid - Proprietary technology that provides on-site, self-service electricity via industry standard charging stations and in-wall outlets to customers who initiate service with their mobile phones
•     Healthcare: Focus Fertility - A suite of services that equips women and their partners with information they need to efficiently navigate the process of fertility treatments, saving them time, money and stress.
•     Smart Cities: Soceana - A web-based platform that strategically pairs similarly-minded non-profits with for-profit companies and their employees for volunteer opportunities, leading to tax write-offs, purposeful branding, and synergistic mentorship.

The next Challenge Cup competition will be held in Boston Massachusetts on December 18. Austin, TX will kick off 2014 on January 17 with Denver, CO and Sao Paulo, Brazil closing out the month. Challenge Cup Global Partners include: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, District of Columbia, Pearson, TechCocktail, iStrategyLabs, Microsoft, and The Aspen Institute.

To be accepted, companies must be less than three years old, have less than $3M USD in revenue to date, have a scalable product or service already in the market, evidence some level of traction (active users, enterprise customers, or revenue), and have raised less than $1.5M USD in capital. Companies can apply on http://challengecup.1776dc.com/apply.

About 1776
1776 is a major initiative focused on helping entrepreneurs seeking to reinvent our lives as citizens. Located just blocks from the White House, 1776 convenes and accelerates startups from around the world by connecting them to the political, intellectual, social and financial capital that make Washington, D.C. unique. Visit http://www.1776dc.com or @1776dc on Twitter for more information.

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