After sifting through almost 40 submissions, reading business plans, listening to pitches, talking to entrepreneurs, their customers, their attorneys (in some cases), plus a lot of discussion and comment and review and revision, today my local angel investor group–The Willamette Angel Conference–meets at the McDonald’s theater in Eugene, Ore. (my hometown) to choose its winner.
The win means getting $165,000 in angel investment.
The competing companies are so good that we had to change the format to keep all six of our finalists. We were supposed to have five, but we couldn’t figure out which one to drop. So, after a great deal of discussion with the event organizing committee, we kept all six.
It still comes down to a single winner. By dinner time today, we will have our winner.
The finalists are (in alphabetical order):
- Arcimoto: an electrically powered vehicle
- Delta Point: software to better diagnose cancer from images
- Good Clean Love: all-natural, organic intimacy products
- InFuez: kitchen countertops from recycled materials
- ShopDragon: small-business e-commerce
- Vizme: a next-generation social application.
It should be an interesting day. There are 33 investors, one vote each. Obviously we have a lot of diverse weightings of different factors. Local development, job creation, quality of the investment, risk-return ratios and so on. But it all comes down to one vote per member, and one company winning.
And, by the way, if you noticed I’ve been posting less than usual on this blog over the past couple of weeks, this is one of the reasons.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
