PitchForce – Early Stage Startup Fundraising Event at Runway in San Francisco

PitchForce is a series of monthly fundraising events for companies in software, social, mobile, big data, consumer web, finance/payments, clean tech, biotech or medtech sectors. The event is organized by Max Shapiro, CEO of PeopleConnect Staffing. Ten companies each will have a demo table to showcase their company as well as network with angels, VCs and guests during the first hour. The attendees then vote for their favorite company and the top five will get to present to a distinguished panel of investors.

Today we attended PitchForce at the Runway co-working space in San Francisco. The panel included:

• Max Shapiro, CEO at PeopleConnect Staffing – Moderator

• Eric Ferraro, Principal at Fathom Law – Panelist

• Noah Doyle, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners – Panelist

• Bob Kamm, Entrepreneir in Residence at Sandy hill ventures – Panelist

• Matt Walters, Manging Director at Runway – Panelist

• Paul Weiss, Principal at Panthera Leasing – Panelist

• Ullas Naik, Founder, Streamlined Ventures – Panelist

Winners of the November 13, 2014 PitchForce event were:

UtilityAPI, a B2B SaaS company for solar and energy management companies and Blueboard, a rewards and recognition platform, which tied for third place based on the panel vote.

Coming in at second place was Clouddock, a company all the way from Dublin, Ireland looking to solve cloud fragmentation. Cian Brassil, CEO of Clouddock, won over the judges with his creative and clean presentation and thought-provoking statistics about the cloud storage space.

SchillerBikes won first place. Judah Schiller, CEO of SchillerBikes, impressed the panel with his innovative water bike and detailed presentation. Merging iconic design and precision engineering, the SchillerBike was a first-to-market eye-opener to the world of water sports, luxury, and tourism.