no comments | San Diego entrepreneurs “quick pitch” their ideas
We all know that San Diego has a deep diversity of marvelous and innovative tech and life sciences start-ups. And on Thursday this past week, I came face to face with 17 young companies that are all on the verge of greatness.
I attended the 2009 Quick Pitch competition where I heard the brave entrepreneurs make two-minute pitches before an audience of more than 300. After each presentation, the five judges rated them (with large flash cards) on both content and style on a scale of one to 10-like a diving competition. It takes a thick skin– a necessity for a successful entrepreneur– to subject himself to public scrutiny and possible humiliation.
These 17 entrepreneurs were selected from a pool of more than 150 by the San Diego Tech Coast Angels which sponsored the event.
The winners were:
Overall: Radical Therapeutix, Inc., which is developing drugs that can reduce the amount of tissue damage after a heart attack. Dr. Roberta A. Gottlieb, president and CEO, was one of only two women presenters, and she immediately caught the attention of the audience when she said, “Look to the left, and look to the right. One of you is going to die from heart disease.” Gottlieb is director of the BioScience Center at San Diego State University.
Best pitch: Biological Dynamics, Inc., which is developing early cancer detection methods. Raj Krishnan, CEO, developed the technology while earning his Ph.D. in bioengineering at UC San Diego which has granted the company an exclusive license. In June, the company won first prize at the UCSD Entrepreneur Challenge, a student business plan competition.
Best content: ecoATM, whose patent-pending self-serve eCycling stations visually and electrically inspect used consumer electronics products such as cell phones, connect them to secondary markets and provide immediate payment to consumers. The first one was installed in September in the Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha, Neb.
Barbara Bry is SDNN's associate publisher and an investor.
In San Diego, you could be out almost every night attending an event in the life sciences and technology communities between BIOCO, CommNexus, CONNECT, the San Diego Software and Internet Council, StartUp Circle, TechAmerica, and many other organizations. The amount and diversity of innovation taking place in San Diego is staggering. All San Diego entrepreneurs need now is a lot more money to come to town.
Barbara Bry, the associate publisher of San Diego News Network, was the first associate director of Connect, a program that nurtures new tech and life sciences companies, and she currently services on their board of directors.
Tags: Quick Pitch, SDNN
