It’s not easy to pitch a game-changing startup idea in less than 50 seconds, no less doing it in an elevator rising fast to the top of an iconic Seattle structure, where a panel of all-star judges awaits.
But that’s exactly what Seattle-area entrepreneurs did over the past six months as part of GeekWire’s Elevator Pitch video series, an exciting and pressure-packed competition pitting local founders against one another as they pitch their business concepts in less than a minute. We started the season at the Space Needle before shifting to Seattle’s historic Smith Tower.
Now it’s time to crown the ultimate champion at another venue: the 2018 GeekWire Summit. Startup founders who won their Elevator Pitch episodes will come together and pitch their ideas onstage in front of more than 900 business and tech leaders at the 2018 GeekWire Summit, taking place this week in Seattle (tickets are available here for our biggest event ever).
Our judges — Richard Tait; Heather Redman; T.A. McCann; and Chris Blessington — will join us at the GeekWire Summit on Tuesday and hear 48-second pitches from the finalists. They’ll make their winning pick, and the audience will have a chance to vote on their favorite idea, as well.
We’ve posted all nine episodes from this season of the Elevator Pitch series below. Here are the winning founders from each episode, almost all of whom are set to be on hand for the finals at the GeekWire Summit:
- Episode 1: NEU CEO Kwame Boler
- Episode 2: KenSci CEO Samir Manjure
- Episode 3: StormSensor CEO Erin Rothman
- Episode 4: Illumagear CEO Max Baker
- Episode 5: Invio CPO Cassie Wallender
- Episode 6: JetClosing CEO Dan Greenshields
- Episode 7: Simply Augmented CEO Boaz Ashkenazy
- Episode 8: Samaritan CEO Jonathan Kumar
- Episode 9: Energsoft CEO Slava Agafonov
A big thanks to Smartsheet for sponsoring The Elevator Pitch. Also, thanks to The Space Needle and The Chihuly Garden and Glass.