TechOut 2012 Provides $100K to Three Startups
The New Hampshire High Technology Council, in partnership with the abi Innovation Hub, launched the first ever TechOut Startup Competition this September, awarding $100,000 to three winning companies before an audience of nearly 250 business professionals and entrepreneurs. The event also served as a fundraiser for the two non-profit organizations.
miEdge won first place at TechOut and received the grand prize of $50,000; Therma-HEXX was awarded $30,000 for earning second place in the competition. Sensible Spreader was crowd-sourced as the third place winner, based on real time voting by attendees at the event and received $20,000. Six companies were chosen as finalists to compete in TechOut 2012 and were selected from an initial group of 12 semi-finalists.
Nanocomp Technologies, located in Merrimack, NH, hosted the first TechOut competition. Attendees were responsible for taking an electronic voting device when arriving to help select the third place winner. Product displays from the six finalists lined the large space at Nanocomp and company representatives were eager to discuss the major concepts behind their products. Wakup even included free samples of their caffeinated chap stick for attendees to try out for themselves. This year’s judges included Mark Galvin, John Gargasz, Jeremy Hitchcock, Shawn McGowan, Joe Mullen, Steve Street, and Susan Woods.
Tom Daly, Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Dyn Inc., introduced the six finalists: Therma-HEXX, Mosaic Archive, Screen Retriever, miEdge, Sensible Spreader, and Wakup. Each company gave a seven minute pitch to the live audience, unaware of the predetermined winners and with the mindset of winning over the crowd to obtain the third place prize.
After the presentations, the first and second place winners were announced. miEdge was awarded first place for its premiere SaaS based business intelligence provider. This sophisticated search engine software helps find potential customers, manage current customers, and locate businesses that may currently be out of compliance with government 5500 filing requirements. Therma-HEXX won second place for ThermaPAVER and ThermaCEILING — their heat transfer efficiency products make zoning and installation easier and more flexible than any other hydronic system. The crowd favorite was Sensible Spreader, which was selected as the third place winner for integrating GPS mapping technology in cooperation with a retrofit on existing v-box spreaders in order to provide a dual hopper system capability at limited cost.
