Unmentionable wins! Actually, it was a tie: Judging the finals at another exciting venture bootcamp at UC Berkeley
“And the winner is...hard to describe in front of a bunch of people I just met.”
Had a fun morning meeting all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed brilliant students, program coordinators like Justin Wong and Simran Kaur and Anika R. and other venture judges and Silicon Valley investors like Alexander Walterspeil (head trader at Indaba Capital Management), Brandon Drew (General Partner at SaaS Growth Ventures), and Bob Upham of Tess Ventures to hear the pitches for Gigi Wang’s Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Final Presentations.
I’ve been mentoring and judging Bootcamps at Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology for about five years since I met Gigi at the European Innovation Academy in France. Every Bootcamp is different but they’re all a whirlwind of inspiration and learning, and a shot in the arm of what my fellow startup mentor Pamela Day calls “Vitamin S”, for Students.
This year in my track we heard four startup ideas developed during the week’s Bootcamp accelerated process. I was joined by two venture capitalists: Bill Reichert, Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures; and Shuonan Chen, general partner at Innovation Overflow Venture Capital.
“We chose two pitches, it was a tie! ”
“One winning team, described as 50% ‘hipster’, proposed a second-hand furniture service for student communities.”
The tie was between a second-hand furniture service from a team that self-described as 50% hipster and delivered an all-bases covered pitch including customer validation and operating expenses on their financial projections; and a company that I found intriguing, but not easily mentionable during my one-day appearance at Bootcamp.
Most years when I can, I enjoy mentoring the teams during the week leading up to the final, giving me a chance to get to know the entrepreneurs and advise their team formation and development of their venture pitch.
I didn’t have that chance this year, otherwise I certainly would have had more time to construct how I might present Anvio as winners, live on the Zoom to all participants. Somehow I still did that within minutes of hearing of them (waiting for the video of the event to recall exactly what I said without using the term the team suggested: “sex toy”, this is FAR MORE than a toy). And now I’m struggling to describe it here, on the Internet where nothing ever dies.
I’m not sure I want to rank for these terms in perpetuity….
“I don’t want to rank for these terms yet I see the need for this intimate smart device and subscription service …there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool. ”
…there’s definitely something there with this sexual wellness training tool.
There’s something there in its not-often-enough-spoken-of problem, its ‘non-gendered’ solution, a knowledge and support community, a data-driven wellness option, an intriguing new smart device, a relationship aid, a subscription service for a monthly box of related products, and still there is so much left unsaid.
You’ll have to look for it in the slides above!
As Shuo Chen suggested during the judging, the Anvio team can always start with a MVP (minimum viable product) of a box subscription and discussion community as they continue to research and develop the intimate electronic device itself, and design and build the mobile app that supports it.
This particular problem space may be hard-to-talk-about (sort of, Teen Vogue famously covered it in 2017, and incited a backlash for erasing women — calling them “non-prostate owners”) yet the problem is a known source of trauma for millions of newcomer practitioners.
“Ok, ok. Enough prevarication.
You might call the Berkeley Bootcamp winner I championed...
’A SMART BUTT PLUG’.
Yep, went there! 😱”
Phew, I said it and I’m still alive. (Now to watch my website ranking skew over time…)
Let’s put it this way. This winning formula is…
Anvio = a not-often-spoken-about problem + a non-gendered solution + a knowledge/support community + a data-driven wellness option + an intriguing new smart device + a relationship aid + a mobile app supporting a subscription service for data + a box subscription service for related products.
Congrats again to all the hard-working BMOE teams for a great Final Presentations Day. I look forward to what you do next!
Here's the venture team I sent to the finals at UC Berkeley's school of engineering entrepreneurship bootcamp
Judging winning venture ideas at UC Berkeley: how about a toothpaste that fills in your cavities?
Called it! Congratulations to UJU for winning best of the Berkeley-based teams at BMOE Summer 2018.
And, an algorithm called it too?
Judging at the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Summer 2017
It was so much fun to mentor & judge the tech startups at Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMOE) at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. 120 global participants gathered at UC Berkeley for a one week immersive experience into entrepreneurship, team-building, mentorship, and more.
Here's the team I & my fellow judge chose as the winner of our 40-person cohort: BrainyT, an AI-for-manufacturing going to market in Brazil.
I also ran into familiar faces from last month's extreme accelerator in Europe, the European Innovation Academy #eia2017italy: participant & UCB student Bailey Farren, and fellow EIA chief mentors UCB faculty Stephen Torres and Pamela Day, who also was a judge at BMOE!
Looking forward to Harika Kalluri's upcoming interview with me and Pamela for the Berkeley Point Of View. We yakked Harika's ear off about tech investing, product building, and the empowering spirit of entrepreneurship.
A few snaps from some of the seven venture pitches my fellow judge Kal Deutsch (managing partner and founding investor of The Batchery, a Bay Area-based global incubator for seed stage startups) and I judged.
Good job to these teams from Berkeley, Denmark, Brazil & Hong Kong:
- BrainyT, the AI for small manufacturers
- SoWa the wireless professional speakers
- A Slice of Reality interactive media system
- the ed-tech play for lesson plans Athena
- CoffeeX, a connected coffee kiosk
- Candle Sense electric candle for memory boosting
- LedoAds, the marketplace for space ads
Thanks to UCBerkeley's entrepreneurship faculty Gigi Wang, the director of BMOE, for including me in her awesome program!
Photo: Gigi Wang
Congrats to BrainyT for making it into the top 3 startups at BMOE Summer 2017!
Thanks to Harika Kalluri for the interview! You can read it at the Sutardja Center site here.
What we mean when we say "Berkeley"
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Berkeley is revealed in its "byzantine cultural complexity" by secular Jewish homegirl author of new book about going undercover in Jerry Falwell's evangelical church.
"If you’re from Berkeley...you know the muscle of the Berkeley Left is actually made up of a million fibers, often flexing at cross purposes — the Green Partiers, the Clintonites, the Obamaphiles, the Slow Foodists and Dumpster Divers, the Second and Third Wave feminists, the Marxists, anarchists, and Revolutionary Communists, the vaguely apathetic left-leaners, the merely apathetic."
"The first time I saw a bowl of table grapes I had a panic attack. ~ KOKO MULDER"
Connecting through social media with the diaspora of Berkeley kids, and comparing our upbringings. Read the New York Times article here.