I’m heading to Seattle tomorrow for the AWS Startup Challenge finals. Many entered the competition with the hope of winning fame & glory, $50K in cash, $50K in AWS credit and an investment offer from Amazon (the details of which I’m fuzzy on).
The finalists are:
- Brainscape
- Commerce360
- Justin.tv
- Milemeter
- Ooyala
- UserTesting.com
- WeoGeo
If you’ve any experience with the finalists, let me know. I’m one of the judges and Polaris is sponsoring the event. There is a cool dinner, which will bring together entrepreneurs and execs from the area. Unfortunately, it’s $100/seat. More importantly, Polaris is throwing together an after-dinner party. No, you won’t need to pay for that. If you can’t make dinner but want to come to the party, let me know.
Hope to see you in Seattle.
Simeon,
I know Milemeter and Chris Gay.
Chris is very smart and has taken a pretty stale industry (insurance) and found an unserviced area. The ground swell from environmental groups, minorities, and anyone that drives less than 10,000 miles a year is surprising. Chris has pretty well thought through all the typical questions; fraud, growth, why the big companies haven’t offered this yet and if there really is a market. If he is right about that, this will be a very big company quickly.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Milemeter and hope you enjoy Seattle.