Educannon, Ethical Electric, Dorsata, and RideScout Take Top Honors at Challenge Cup D.C.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) October 31, 2013 -- Today, 1776, an incubator platform located a few blocks from the White House, announced the winners of Challenge Cup for the Washington, D.C. 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.
Thirty-five startups, distilled from 70 regional applications, competed during the evening of October 29th event with over 425 attendees. The competitors also participated in an accelerator program for the two days preceding the competition.
“We had high expectations for the D.C. regional competition because it was the first of 16 in our global competition,” said Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776. “The number of new companies in this region innovating to solve critical, global challenges is inspiring and the feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive. We applaud the startups, mentors and community that came out in full force to participate in both the pop-up accelerator and pitch competition and get this global initiative kicked off in the best possible way.”
Washington, DC’s Mayor Vincent Gray was on hand to announce the finalists in the completion. The regional winners include:
Education: Educannon - Online learning environment to build and share interactive video lessons made by teachers for their students.
Energy: Ethical Electric - Energy company that powers as many American homes and businesses as possible with 100% clean energy from local, renewable sources like wind and solar.
Healthcare: Dorsata - Platform gives clinicians ability to build evidence-based pathways and guidelines collaboratively.
Smart Cities: RideScout - Smartphone app that aggregates all ground transportation options around a user in real time.
The next Challenge Cup competition will be held in Chicago at 1871 on November 4, followed by Moscow at Digital October on November 9, and Berlin at Betahaus on November 13. London, Los Angeles, New York and Boston will follow at the end of November through December.
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.
Lisa Throckmorton, SpeakerBox Communications, http://www.hailocab.com/dc, 703-287-7803, [email protected]
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