BioInteractive Technologies with
TENZR and Lucent Biosciences with SOILEOS were granted $110,000 each by angel investors in SAC XV to keep growing their businesses in Healthtech and
Agritech.
The Seattle Angel Conference has just concluded it’s 15th event, granting $220,000 to two startups. The event was well organized by
@John Sechrest, founder of the Seattle Angel Conference whose mission is to accelerate the startup ecosystem in the Seattle Area.
In attendance were investors,
entrepreneurs and supporters of all backgrounds and expertise considering the presenting companies were diverse in their products,
markets, and industries. The mix created a wonderful networking environment
for building great new connections where one would not normally
develop them.
The conference began with a kickoff by John Sechrest. Elaine Werffeli provided an overview of the state of startup investing in the Pacific Northwest. It was delightful to know that the angel investing community has grown annually in the region and that the Northwest leads the way for funding Women only and Women & Men startups. This was followed by a panel discussion with Sharad Agrawal, Fran Dannaway, and Geoff Harris moderated by Yoko Okano.
The Seattle Angel Conference XV
Finalists pitching their companies were:
- Lisi Global: Environmentally safe, patented electronic technology that eradicates soil pests and pathogens that cause $350 billion in global crop losses annually.
- Lucent BioSciences: Soileos, is a new class of “bio released” micronutrient fertilizers that don’t pollute, grows crops with higher yield & nutrient levels at a lower price.
- Vooks is the world’s first subscription-based streaming platform exclusively dedicated to animated books.
- BioInteractive Technologies: Tenzr, its revolutionizing hand therapy, empowers individuals with hand, wrist and forearm injuries, by removing the uncertainty in their recovery process.
- Via Airlift: The most convenient, personalized solution to get locally sourced fresh food, snacks & beverages at work.
- Energsoft: Enables enterprise and clean-tech R&D with data unification, visualization and AI for energy storage with $2B beachhead market for OEM and electronics.
After the presentations, the angels gathered to vote on their collective grand prize winner while the presenters networked with attendees. This was an exciting time as the attendees asked follow-up
questions to the presenters and the attendees discussed the strengths of the
presentations and speculated as to the winner.
Poker chips were given to the public to vote for their favorite pitch. The public winner was Vooks! Then, the angels returned from their discussion, and they announced that the presentations and
startups were so strong that the angels decided to pool additional funds and
invest into two companies instead of one: Lucent BioSciences and
BioInteractive Technologies!
The social media team interviewed three finalists’ startups about the biggest takeaways of SAC XV, and some of their comments were: "This was a great experience, Angel investors ask great questions that helped us evolve and improve" "Seeing other team's pitches and learning from them was awesome.” There is so much to learn just going through the process of putting a pitch
together, networking with other startups and being challenged by good questions, that all startups in the pacific northwest and nearby, should participate in The Seattle Angel Conference!
The next conference will be in November 2019 with August 29th as the deadline for the next set of companies to apply.
Written and edited by,
Joaquin Gallardo and Natalia
Arango.
