We Won!

Hey everyone, in this post I wanted to touch on a little bit of the business side of Anicell. We recently competed in the Invest Southwest's Venture Madness tournament against other startup companies. Invest Southwest was originally founded in 1992 to help startups in the Southwestern United States by connecting willing investors with the bright minds behind the companies. This year's competition was held in the Valley Ho hotel in Scottsdale. The structure of the tournament itself is very similar to March Madness college basketball tournament (that's why it's called Venture Madness). The tournament pool originally consisted of 64 startups. This group is whittled down to just 16 companies after two online elimination rounds. Companies that advance were chosen by a selection panel because of their innovativeness. The final 16 square off in a live-demo contest where they pitch their company's idea to a panel of investors. We were all invited to watch as Mr. Ames, Anicell's president and CEO, gave a rundown to the panel on why they should invest in Anicell. In the end, we placed second and won $5000, and were all pretty overjoyed. One of the first things I asked Mr. Ames after congratulating him was "So, how much of that is for paying the unpaid interns?" The winning company was Clean Router. They specialize in making wifi routers that help make the internet safer for kids (a good idea in today's online world).

The check

The bracket with all 64 entrants