Galvanize Hosts First Annual Colorado Demo Day with Nearly 40% Female Founders
Denver, CO (PRWEB) January 25, 2015 -- Today Galvanize announced the inaugural Colorado Demo Day, to be held January 29th at 5pm MST on its Golden Triangle Campus. This will be a unique opportunity for investors, press, and the public to rub shoulders with local founders aspiring to build the next billion-dollar company.
“While the San Francisco Bay Area may represent the center of the tech world, there’s an incredible amount of innovation happening outside of Silicon Valley. We’re excited for Colorado founders to show that amazing startups are thriving here, and that our community supports and encourages diversity,” said Lawrence Mandes, Galvanize co-founder.
Companies participating in Colorado Demo Day range from a mobile training platform for sports to data analytics for the prescription drug industry. A total of 16 founders will present their startups, and nearly 40% of the companies will be represented by female founders.
Each company will present a 3-minute pitch to the public and an expert panel of VCs and founders. Judges include: Parker Thompson, Partner at 500 Startups, Nick Wyman, Managing Director at Galvanize Ventures; Nicole Glaros, Managing Director of Techstars Boulder; Kurt Hoeven, Blue Ocean Holdings; Stephen Schovee, Galvanize Mentor; and Matt Talbot and Samantha Halloway, co-founders of GoSpotCheck.
"I've had the opportunity to work with a number of Colorado startups over the last decade and believe it’s one of the most exciting startup ecosystems in the US," said Parker Thompson, Partner at 500 Startups.
Startups will compete for $10,000 in cloud credits from Softlayer, as well as the chance to pitch at Google for Entrepreneur’s 2nd Annual Demo Day, held this April at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. One startup will also win a competitor slot for the CSU Blue Ocean Enterprises Challenge, held in Fort Collins this May.
Last year’s Google for Entrepreneurs Demo Day brought 10 different startups from its North American Tech Hub Network to Mountain View to pitch judges Steve Case (co-founder of AOL), Stephanie Palmeri (SoftTechVC) and MG Siegler (Google Ventures) as well as an audience full of Silicon Valley investors.
“This was an amazing way to get in front of a large group of people from Silicon Valley,” said Matt Talbot, co-founder of Colorado startup GoSpotCheck, who represented Galvanize last year. “We made so many connections. It’s hard to even quantify how many great people we met over the 2 days. The experience was tremendously valuable.” All of the competing teams received a $100,000 on-the-spot investment by Steve Case, including the Galvanize representative, GoSpotCheck. "I wish someone had taken a video of us when that was announced to see all of our jaws drop," said Samantha Holloway, co-founder of GoSpotCheck.
This event is open to the public. Please register to attend here: http://bit.ly/COdemoday
About Galvanize: Galvanize is a community of urban campuses for digital innovators and entrepreneurs that aligns work and learning by combining education, experience, and industry under one roof. Since launching its first campus in Denver in October 2012, Galvanize has expanded to San Francisco, California, and Boulder, Colorado, with more campuses scheduled to open throughout the U.S. in 2014 and 2015. Each campus offers training and education opportunities, tech-focused events and a variety of workspace options. To learn more about Galvanize and membership, visit http://www.galvanize.com.
Mark Saldana, Galvanize, http://www.galvanize.it, +1 909-855-4344, [email protected]
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