LAUNCH ACADEMY WELL-REPRESENTED AT PLUG AND PLAY’S STARTUP SHOWDOWN

With over 15 companies pitching for $25,000 in investment and three months in Silicon Valley, it’s no doubt that the competition was pretty stiff at last week’s Startup Showdown.

Naturally, there was no shortage of Launch Academy representation both on the stage and on the judging panel.  Our friends Andrew Jones from Garibaldi Capital and Andrew Lugsdin of BDC Venture Capital both sat in the judge’s corner, and we were super stoked to have resident teams Tangoo and VenueSpot up on stage.  Both rocked their pitches, but ultimately it was our very own Launch Academy co-founder Jesse Heaslips’ Bitcoin company Bex.io that took home one of the winning prizes.

For both Tangoo and VenueSpot, the main stickler for the judges was the difficult spaces in which both companies operate (event-planning and venue-sourcing, respectively). However, there were some great outcomes for both nonetheless:

“We had some great connections with the judges who approached us afterwards and said they wanted to make intros for us” recalled Paul Davidescu, CEO of Tangoo.

The same went for VenueSpot CEO Jerome Ng and his co-founder, Tom:

“After the event, we had several people approach us and email us saying they loved our pitch and they were surprised we didn’t get a term sheet… [but,] Plug and Play told Tom and I that if we come up with another idea [they’d] give us the $25k.”

In the meantime, it’s straight back to work for both Tangoo and VenueSpot. After all, as Jerome puts it:

“Every “no” you get just motivates you and makes you hungrier.”