Street Insider
1776 Wraps Up Regional Challenge Cup Competitions and Announces Winning Startups For San Francisco Region
Posted February 28, 2014 2:31 PM EST
Today, 1776, an incubator platform located a few blocks from the White House, in partnership with RocketSpace, an open innovation campus for startups, announced the winners of Challenge Cup for the San Francisco region.
Challenge Cup is a startup competition spanning 16 cities around the world and culminating in Washington, D.C. to find the world’s most promising startups innovating in the categories ofeducation, healthcare, energy, and smart cities. The San Francisco event marks the end of the regional competitions, which began last fall. Winning competitors are now preparing for the global festival, kicking off May 10th.
Twenty-two startups competed during the event on February 27. The competitors also participated in an accelerator program for the two days preceding the competition, which included a fireside chat led by Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppleman.
In addition to Evan Burfield, cofounder of 1776, judges included Doug Solomon, IDEO Fellow; Bob Linscheid, President and CEO of San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; Aleda Schaffer, Strategic Partnerships Manager of American Airlines; Shannon Spanhake, Deputy Innovation Officer for the City of San Francisco; Freddi Rokaw, Purdue University; Mike Beckerman, President and CEO of the Internet Association and representatives from Pearson.
“San Francisco was the 16th and last city of the Challenge Cup tour and the startups lived up to expectations with a lineup of amazing pitches,” said Evan Burfield, cofounder of 1776. “The competition was so steep that the judges required triple the amount of time to decide who would advance to the final round in Washington, D.C. this May at the Challenge Festival. It seems only fitting that in the city of startups, the cofounders were prepared and put on a great show.”
The regional winners include:
• Education: UClass – A venture-backed, Common-Core-lesson marketplace that aims to disrupt the curriculum industry. On UClass, both teachers and textbook companies sell their vetted resources in bite-sized formats.
• Energy: Enact Systems – A home-energy marketplace that allows you to plan money-saving projects, view live bids from local service providers and financiers in an area, schedule appointments with them and more.
• Healthcare: ReferralMD – A web application that offers a comprehensive, business-management solution designed to track and monetize health care referrals.
• Smart Cities: HandUp – A direct donation system for homeless people and others in need in a given neighborhood. With HandUp, users can donate to a specific person via their web profile or SMS, learn about their story and needs and hear updates on their progress.
The Challenge Festival will run from May 10th to May 17th, with the headline event, the Challenge Cup Global Finals, taking place the afternoon of May 17th. View the schedule and register for badges here. Challenge Cup Global Partners include: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, District of Columbia, Pearson, TechCocktail, iStrategyLabs, Microsoft, The Aspen Institute and Booz Allen Hamilton.
To be accepted, companies must be less than three years old, have less than $3M USD in revenue to date, have a scalable product or service already in the market, evidence some level of traction (active users, enterprise customers, or revenue), and have raised less than $1.5M USD in capital. Companies can apply on http://challengecup.1776dc.com/apply.
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