The MassChallenge Boston 2015 Startup Showcase Recap
On July 29th, MassChallenge hosted its annual Startup Showcase, an incredible event which provided the public with its first formal glimpse at the 128 startups selected for our 2015 Boston accelerator program, and what a night it was. This year we hosted the event at the lovely Seaport Hotel in Boston and despite the enormous size of the function room we quickly hit capacity with a record-breaking turnout.
More than 1,050 attendees, including MC community members, alumni, students, sponsors, investors and journalists came out to meet and support a group of nearly 200 finalists and staff bringing the grand total in attendance to over 1,200 people. Despite the near-constant cacophony that one would expect with such a large crowd, the room was buzzing with excitement as attendees learned firsthand how our 2015 finalists are revolutionizing the startup ecosystem around the world.
Our finalists, comprising the gamut of sectors and industries took advantage of a fantastic opportunity to promulgate their individual visions to the broader Boston innovation community and the response was unanimously electric. I had the opportunity to catch up with a number of teams after the event and here’s what they had to say:
Michael Sattler, founder of team money management platform, Splitzee, was hoarse:
Splitzee enjoyed the Showcase immensely. Our whole team lost our voices and the strength in our legs by about the 90-minute mark. For me I think the big takeaway was the sheer diversity in evidence — both among exhibitors and the range and variety of the attendees. I could with enthusiasm direct people to check out insect protein and scanning drones and 3D displays and motorized skateboards. Where else does that happen?
Andrew Gordon, founder of DealerScience, a company which provides automated enterprise solutions for car dealerships had this to say:
It was great to see how far everyone had come in only a short month, and feel the amazing energy in the room. Thank you to the community and especially the mentors for their support!
Justine Lynch, Community Director at ArtLifting who is one of our Alumni in Residence, was pleasantly surprised at the huge amount of attendees:
It was nice to have the chance to meet the startups face-to-face. We’re here [At MassChallenge] every day so we see them around the office and read about them online, but last night made it more of a personal experience. PB&B was one of my favorites!
Eran Gronich of Food-Tech company Flying Spark, which specializes in novel ways to utilize insect protein in food products, made some quality connections:
Last night was awesome, we had a lot of attention and were fully booked throughout the event. The responses were great; 90% of the people tasted and liked our product. We were approached by investors, people from the food industry and potential clients. We were also hired to cater a prestigious event.
Eli Feldman of the restaurant hiring platform Clothbound corroborated many of his MC peers’ points and gave a shoutout to the MC team!
The showcase was an amazing opportunity to talk with a diverse, engaged group of people about what we’re doing with Clothbound. I think it says a lot that I woke up this morning with a little bit of sore throat from talking to so many people. We spoke with attendees from a range of background from stem cells to hotels.
All of them were enthusiastic to hear about our company regardless of whether it connected with their interests.The Mass Challenge team was incredible. They were like concierges and maitre d’s making sure we were finding our locations and everything we needed and helping us meet the right people
The unprecedented turnout for the showcase was complemented by some eye-popping social media analytics:
824,000 impressions, 290,000 reached and trending on Twitter Boston. See below for some top tweets of the night.
Thanks to all of you who came out to support the MassChallenge 2015 finalist class and a special thanks to the Boston Seaport Hotel for the beautiful accommodations. We hope to see all of you again at Startup Showcase 2016!
- James Maynard and Julia Barry, MassChallenge Marketing & Social Media
Originally published at masschallenge.org.
