Travelfli Wins Plug and Play “Investor’s Choice” Award
We are starting to wind down from a crazy productive week in San Francisco. The Plug and Play Expo was held yesterday in Mountain View and several of the TechStars companies took David Cohen up on his invitation to present at the event.
Scott McNealy, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Sun Microsystems, hit off the expo with a keynote that had me in stitches. Aside from cracking some great jokes, he also provided us with straightforward advice on the necessity for leaders to always be in character and the importance of selecting the right spouse.
Following the keynote, 43 companies were each given two minutes to give a brief company pitch. A panel of about 30 investors chose the top three companies of interest to them out of all the presenters. The votes were counted and one-by-one, three companies were presented with an “Investor’s Choice” trophy and invited to give a full 10 minute demo/presentation to the entire audience.
While votes were being counted, Tim Draper, the Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), provided the second engaging and entertaining keynote speech of the day. His theme centered on how fast technology is allowing companies to innovate and he encouraged us all to be risk takers and inflict real change on the world. And then he sang. And danced. And sang some more. It was hilarious. Check out the Riskmaster on his site.
Soon thereafter the judges announced the winners. To our delight, Travelfli was one of the three companies investors selected as their favorite! In fact, the organizer of the event said that 75% of the investors voted for Travelfli. We enthusiastically hopped up on stage and proceeded to give the full fledge 10 minute demo to the entire audience. Despite some technical mishaps that were out of our control, the audience response was tremendous and we were able to secure a bunch of additional meetings with investors in the valley. Looks like we’ll be back to the bay area sooner than we thought!
We got a real trophy!
Special thanks to Saeed Amidi, Amir Amidi, and the rest of the Plug & Play folks for hosting a great event and inviting TechStars to take part in the excitement!
