The Northwest Entrepreneur Network hosted one of its signature events last Wednesday, the spring version of First Look Forum. (For those who want to know the whole format, check the appendix at the bottom of this post.) In a nutshell, it’s a several month process that brings 12 entrepreneurs who have never pitched their business before, together with 60-70 VC’s and Angels. Very cool format.
This year’s group of 12 finalists spanned the gamut from fusion to chocolate. My colleague Shelley Whelan already posted a nice follow-up on the NWEN blog. But Alissa Johnson from the Alliance of Angels had a clever idea for a blog post, and allowed me to steal it from her, since she is too busy at VCIC to put it together. Her idea – explain how if all of these companies became successful, how might one use all of them in a single day. So here goes, using me as the example.
As soon as I woke up, I’d log into the dashboard of FLF winner Guide Analytics. The company helps patients manage heart failure and avoid hospitalization through the continuous monitoring of edema. Patients wear a bracelet around their ankle, measuring ankle size and relaying that info via bluetooth and wireless devices to the main computer. Now I don’t have heart problems, but I’d be able to check on my aunt’s status, and make sure everything was ok. The system will tell us when she is in danger of a heart attack, and lets us get her to the doctor before it happens.
I’d get in my car and head to work. I’d stop for coffee first at a certain store, because I could get some valuable points to help me in the BodSix game I was currently engaged in. (This is still in development, so I can’t share too much here.) But soon I’d get into the office and say hi to the staff. One of my team members, a woman getting married soon, would be choosing bridesmaid dresses from Little Borrowed Dress. Her bridesmaids would be able to rent these silk dresses for $75, rather than spend $230 for some taffeta number they’d never wear again anyway. Our happy bride-to-be is also showing pictures of the bridesmaid dresses to her fiance, who lives in New York, on their private page at SnuggleCloud, a personal online space for couples.
We’d probably have a client coming in that day, and undoubtedly, there’d be some furniture issue in some hard to reach angle of the room. Thankfully, we’d have our new Flipout Screwdriver, which would enable us to fix it. Before the client got to our office, we would have downloaded the reports from ReadyPulse, a company that provides insight on what works best to grow your audience on Facebook and Twitter. Our client – a software company – is probably using AgileEVM, a product that helps with agile software developments.
We’ll want to take the client to lunch afterwards, so we’ll check UrbanQ a way for us to discover places and experiences we’ll like, from our mobile device. UrbanQ might recommend a nice waterfront restaurant, where we notice all the ships using Fusion Engines developed by Woodruff Scientific. These ships are actually sing sea water and the elements inside of it, to generate fuel through fusion. The restaurant is great. So I log into Meevine and ping my friends about it. Hopefully we’ll all be able to pick a date soon.
It was a long day. So when I get home, I open up a high-end chocolate bar I got from Chocolopolis, something that goes nicely with my Spanish Rioja, and that I’ll probably pick up more of for the dinner party I’m throwing later this week. I end the day reading a book about baseball history that had been turned into an iPad application by Appitude. I use this app because I get to do more than just read the book – I’m part of a virtual book club, chatting on my iPad while scrolling through the text and pictures. Some of my real life friends happen to be reading, and I’m connecting with other baseball history fans.
That’s how I’d be able to utilize all the businesses who made it to the finals of this First Look Forum. I encourage you to go check out the companies who already have products live, and signup to get ont he beta list for the others.
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Appendix: About First Look Forum
- Over the course of several months, about 70 entrepreneurs, who have never pitched their business plan to an investor group, apply to FLF. Everyone who applies gets some business plan coaching from NWEN’s Exec Director, or someone from the investment community.
- A screening committee then whittles those 70 plans down to 20. More coaching.
- Those 20 get parsed to 12. Still more coaching.
- Then the even itself. Each of the 12 gets 5 minutes in front of the most influential group of VC’s, Angels and investors in the Puget Sound. 5 finalists are chosen for 2 more minutes of pitching, and then a judging panel selects a winner.
