Optify Wins Innovate!2010 Seattle Pitch Slam

Optify won first place last week at the Innovate!2010 Seattle Pitch Slam. Optify competed against six other pre-selected semi-finalist startups, including IdeaScale, Bynamite, Tweetajob, Pathable, Yoursphere and Unvarnished, as well as Internmatch, the one-minute Quick Pitch winner. Brian Goffman, Optify CEO and co-founder delivered a five-minute presentation about the Optify business, product and team, winning over the panel of judges and an audience made up of local executives, investors, entrepreneurs and media.

Optify Pitches at Seattle Pitch Slam from Guidewire Group on Vimeo.

Participants were ranked based on the following seven categories:

• Business Viability is scored on three of these categories: overall concept, market size and opportunity, and competitive market risk.
• Execution on Business & Product evaluates the successful progress of the business and its products against key milestones.
• Team assesses the appropriate skills, mentor-ability, and completeness of founders and key management and functional team.
• Business model evaluates pricing and channel strategy and its relevance to the given customer or market conditions.
• Funding indicates the level of outside capital raised by the company.

The criteria above is known as G/Score methodology, engineered by Chris Shipley and the Guidewire Group analyst team.

Innovate!2010 commenced in March and will continue through October, with qualifying Innovate!100 semi-finalists competing in Pitch Slams at more than 20 technology centers nationwide and in Europe. Seattle Pitch Slam took place in conjunction with the pii2010 (piracy identity innovation) and Seattle Geek Week at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center on Aug. 17.

A big thanks to the judges: Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Media, David Geller of WhatCounts and Eyejot, Rebecca Lovell of Northwest Entrepreneur Network, Fran Maier of TRUSTe, Rob Monster of Epik.com, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and Gnomedex, Sam Rosenbalm of Microsoft and Mike Sigal of the Guidewire Group. Also, thank you to all audience members, Innovate!2010 global Sponsors and Partners, as well as to the local organizations and businesses who helped out with Seattle Pitch Slam: Northwest Entrepreneur Network, pii2010 (privacy identity innovation), Seattle 2.0, Seattle Geek Week, Seattle Startup Digest, Startup Weekend and thinkspace.

*Source: Innovate!100′s official website