November's Pitch Breakfast - Heavy on Tech
This month's event featured companies using digital tools to disrupt platforms for charitable giving, accounting services, and retail shopping.
Full Disclosure: Spengler Agans Bradley is a proud sponsor of PitchBreakfast, providing the funding for the video recordings of the pitchsters.
If one thing stuck in my mind after PitchBreakfast, it was how incredibly fast our world is moving towards all things digital. Try this stat on for size: as of the year 2013, 90% of the world's data had been produced in the last 2 years (!) Continuing on this trajectory would resemble something like Moore's law on steroids. (All of this was brought up at PitchBreakfast as part of an announcement for LEVEL, a boot camp for data analytics to be held in January 2016 in Charlotte and a select handful of other cities.)
PitchBreakfast often features tech-savvy entrepreneurs. "Apps" for smartphones are all the rage these days and, with low barriers to entry, they present an attractive opportunity for those innovative persons with enough sweat equity and technology savoir faire. (I know next to nothing about computers, but I did take 8 years of French!) We see a number of new companies present their ideas for apps at PitchBreakfast. The entrepreneurs at this month's event did not pitch any new apps--their business ideas not only reflected the new digital world in which we live but also took a couple swings for the fences.
We're talking about creating new digital/online marketplaces from scratch: -AuditProposal.com seeks to transform the way companies and non-profit organizations find a CPA to perform an audit through its creation of an online marketplace. The company is now the first-ever site where organizations can upload their Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for audits.
Sam Blair pitches AuditProposal.com
The Crypto Store seeks to become the next Amazon.com. It was only a matter of time before an online marketplace was created where Bitcoin users could shop for a wide variety of household goods, electronics, and apparel. The Crypto Store is leading the charge with a one-stop location where Bitcoin can be used to purchase any of 50,000 products.
Ian Worrall explains how The Crypto Store plans to fend off potential forays from traditional e-commerce sites into his new Bitcoin marketplace
We also heard from a company seeking to change the way testers and others collaborate to make video games. Ingeniak provides online cloud-based collaboration tools that help creative minds remove glitches from games. To be honest, I don't know if I could ever fully grasp how all of this works -- I was too busy eating croissants to learn computer programming (side note: why didn't I take Spanish again??) -- but I can relate to Ingeniak's frustrations with annoying bugs and crashes.
Myron Stewart is out to rid the gaming world of technological glitches
Even Goodness Ventures, the company with a non-tech component, relies on a sophisticated website for users to send greeting cards and donate to charity (two birds, one stone). For only $3.99, you can create a one-of-a-kind greeting card -- and Goodness Ventures will send $1 of the purchase price to a charity of your choosing (with no fee to the charity, and options for increased giving above $1). Goodness Ventures caters to both individuals and companies. This is such a great concept that Spengler Agans Bradley will be looking to send its holiday greeting cards from Goodness Ventures.
Nate Baum pioneers social entrepreneurship in the greeting card business
October 21, 2015 was "Back to the Future" Day. Do you think Marty McFly ever could have imagined that we would be able to buy a baseball on the Internet using Bitcoin in 2015? Even a Cubs World Series win seemed more plausible...
Speaking of digital, check out the new PitchBreakfast website. A shoutout to the indefatigable (sounds French, but it's English!) Rachel Martin for the superb design work.
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