The Audience

Our first StartUp CUE was a huge success! Attendance was great, and many innovative thinkers presented their ideas. It was a fantastic opportunity to get inspired and meet other entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

The winner of the StartUp CUE was Judd Knight, and his new company Trainiac.

Second place went to Meredith Turk, and the Impossible Museum

Third place went to Jeff Lewis, and his new Twain lighting system.

Other contestants:

Clayton Smith, Worldki
John Zeman, Trends for the Future
Chase Huey, Renaissance Road
Rosalyn Andrews, The Review Fairy
DC Cooper, His Amazing Voice
Ed Mass
Diane Pearce, Diane’s List
Harish Sundaram, Stand Against Poverty
Brady Lewis, Eco-Friendly Marketing

We had a lot of last minute walkups, unfortunately my notes are a little garbled, and I’m not sure I’ve got all the names right. If you read this and want to correct it, or send a link to your idea, send a note via the contact form.

Stay tuned for video and more information about the winners, and keep an eye out for the next StartUp CUE!

How to Pitch to a VC or Angel – ReadWriteWeb’s excellent advice on building a powerful, focused presentation

Positioning and pitch decks for startups – Ed Sim’s advice on how to position your startup through your presentation. That’s fancy marketing talk for explaining how you’re different from your competition.

Guy Kawasaki’s Video Advice on Presentations – the man’s a legend for a reason, listen and watch.

The Art Of The Pitch: Ron Popeil And Steve Jobs – believe it or not, the same magic that convinces you to buy a combination food processor and fax machine is also at work making you run to the Apple Store everytime Steve Jobs speaks. Make some of that magic work for you.

Perfecting the Fund-Raising Pitch – it’s BusinessWeek, which is completely unhip and 1.0, but they still have some good advice on sticking to the essentials.

What if you don’t want to read all that? Then you’re missing out. But we’ll summarize for you:

1. Keep it simple
2. Be confident and passionate
3. Explain exactly why your idea is completely awesome (not 60% awesome, completely awesome)

That’s it! Now go out there and submit your presentations!

*we also have terrible writers. We’d fire them if we were paying them anything.