Not a Dragons' Den ????

John, Debra and I, three investors who are more angelic ?? than draconian ?? when we put money into startups. Also, don't be deceived by the image, John and Debra have 'angel wings' at least as big as mine. This coming Tuesday we will, in fact, have to give away real money. Not our own, but the New Zealand Software Association has asked us to judge and award prize money to up and coming startups. They will pitch as part of a night out with fine food and wine. Great idea, and already booked out for weeks.

I'm curious to see how the candidates have progressed as I have met many of them before. NZSA have picked some good ones.  

• Amanda Judd from Kai is offering a self-chosen menu alternative to My Food Bag. Manda is only half the height of the CTO and ex-basketball pro, Michael Townsend who got himself a lot of firing power when he was building his team and roped her in as co-founder. He followed our ADI.Clinic advice but takes credit for the picking himself.
• Lauren McKay from Insiteful improves comms around construction projects. She is from Wanaka, they have to build better than maybe Auckland on account of the weather.  I know from other FKAngels already that Lauren is onto something good so it'll be interesting to hear it from the horse's mouth.
• Lisarna Wynyard from MicroManager prevents the revenue leakage from unbilled hours. I met her at an earlier stage at ADI.Clinic and never had any doubt that Lisarna would make progress. It seems to have pivoted a bit which is good as it shows the team is learning and adapting.
• Marta Sudomirska from Tap Creative provides a marketplace for creative services. I first met Marta at a NowGrow.nz event I helped organise earlier this year. I could see a good measure of determination, great to see her surface with a different idea and further down the track.
• Melanie Langlotz from Geo AR Games gets kids off the couch, into parks. Parents and councils love that. A lot of FKAngels like what Melanie is doing but still have reservations about the council focus. Would love to hear what lift she got from the Pokemon Go phenomenon.
  Late entry, hence only reserve.

John and I were judging last year, two of three male judges. So, it is awesome to see Debra Hall joining us at the judging table to make it ♀ and ♂♂ given that we have a lineup of all female CEOs.

Last year's winner Ben Calder from Wherewolf will give an update. Ben showed a lot of drive and it looks like he is still going strong 12 months on. He is definitely not a fail-fast candidate. Big question is, how has he cracked the scalability challenge?

Interesting to see that we have only female pitchers this year. I'm sure that this has nothing to do with the lead organiser Averill Dickson being a woman. However, it segues nicely to the background research I'm doing for another post which will be coming soon "Angel Investing and the Sexes ♂♀".

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Rudi2Wings ?? always happy2help ??

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