TiE Oregon Awards Over $25,000 in Prize Money, Services at Pitch Oregon 2018

TiE Oregon Awards Over $25,000 in Prize Money, Services at Pitch Oregon 2018
By Kari Naone, Executive Director, TiE Oregon

We’re excited to officially announce the winners of our annual Pitch Oregon competition. During this year’s event, we awarded $7,500 in prize money ($5,000 from TiE Oregon and $2,500 from Elevate Capital) and more than $15,000 in free business services to Melaknow, developer of an app providing melanoma detection, The Goodwell Company, which offers sustainable alternatives to plastic oral care products, and Lora DiCarlo, developer of pleasure tech products for female sexual health.

We were extremely impressed by the caliber of the finalists in this year’s pitch competition. All of the startup companies in the competition had innovative ideas and strong business plans. And, all of our finalists at Pitch Oregon represented a wide variety of business concepts and impressive product development expertise that was great to see.

Melaknow won the Concept Stage competition and $2,500. Melaknow has developed an app that uses a patent-pending machine learning algorithm to help primary care doctors determine if a patient has a melanoma. It leverages the power of multiple image analysis techniques to potentially provide a melanoma detection accuracy 50% better than most primary care doctors. Our other great startup finalists in the Concept Stage competition included SaF (Portland), Greetings in Mind (Portland), Event Cherry (Portland), dotmap (Corvallis), and Before Software (Portland).

The Goodwell Company and Lora DiCarlo tied for first place in the Seed Stage competition and each company received $2,500. The Goodwell Company is focused on creating 100 percent natural, subscription-based, sustainable oral care products.  Lora DiCarlo develops pleasure tech products that are designed to revolutionize sexual health for women. Other company finalists competing in the Seed Stage Pitches included Marie Ernst (Portland), Make it Hapin (Portland), and Cocacao (Beaverton).

At the event, we talked with our Pitch Oregon 2018 winners and this is what they had to say:

“Working with TiE Oregon has been a fantastic experience. I participated in TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) when I was in high school and learned how to create and polish a startup pitch. We’re trying to make accurate and affordable skin screening standard for care with Melaknow, which will ultimately help save lives. It’s rewarding to win at Pitch Oregon because all of the funding we raise will go toward fulfilling that mission.”  — Eli Winkelman, founder, Melaknow

“We’re excited to start scaling the company and so we’re dipping our toe into the funding arena at Pitch Oregon. We’re thrilled to be a winner in the Seed Stage competition and we’re looking forward to expanding our business in the year ahead.” — Patrick Tiato, co-founder, The Goodwell Company

“We believe that more women need to be making the decisions in pleasure tech, and truly, in all spaces, so we’re very excited for this recognition from TiE. The money we won at Pitch Oregon will go towards the launch of our first product, Osé, in the second quarter of 2019.”

 — Lora Haddock, founder, Lora DiCarlo

We also had the opportunity to talk with a finalist who was particularly excited about her journey getting to Pitch Oregon 2018 and this is what she had to say:

“I was absolutely thrilled to be selected as one of the finalists for Pitch Oregon this year! I’m not sure if I would have made it this far if I hadn’t recently participated in the TiE XL Boot Camp. That experience was incredible. I learned so much during the boot camp training about how to position my company and fine-tune my presentation that I felt empowered to take it to the next level. I highly encourage any entrepreneur who’s considering pursuing pitch competitions or funding to definitely get involved in the TiE XL Bootcamp.” –  Veronica Lieberman, founder and CEO, Make It Hapin.

In addition to prize money, the winning companies at Pitch Oregon won $5,000 each in free legal services from Tonkon Torp LLP, web content audits by SUPERNEAT, free brand reviews from Tinfish Initiatives, Google Cloud Start Package, free TiE Oregon memberships, and opportunities to pitch the TiE Oregon Angels. Thanks again to all of prize package sponsors who contributed services. We really appreciate your support!

And, thanks again to our judges for this year’s pitch competition; Bryan Hale (DFJ Seattle), Jonathan Lowenhar (ETW Advisors), Susan Namkung (Women’s VC Fund II), and Bobbie Stewart (Palette42).

We also want to give a big shout out to our fantastic sponsors Elevate Capital, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Google, and Moss Adams. Your generous support of Pitch Oregon makes a big impact and benefits entrepreneurs around the state.

Coming up next is our TiE Oregon Annual Awards ceremony which will be held on Wednesday, February 13. We hope to see you there!