“Shark Tank”-Style College Pitch Competition Connects Startups With Renowned VCs and Investors and Chance to Win $250,000
Los Angeles, CA – RECESS, a leading creator of experiences, content, and moments for motivated millennials, today announced the top ten finalists from its nationwide RECESS Music + Ideas Festival Pitch Competition, powered by Southwest Airlines. Each team will be flying to Los Angeles to pitch their ideas in front of some of the biggest VCs and investors in the U.S from June 8-10 as part of the RECESS Field Trip. The winner of the RECESS Pitch Competition will also receive the chance to win a $250,000 cash prize, provided by Capital Championship, a collaborator with RECESS on the 2016 Spring Tour.
“We are extremely impressed by the quality and vision of the teams from our Spring 2016 Class,” said RECESS co-founder, Jack Shannon. “Each competing startup is poised to make an impact on the status quo of its respective industry and RECESS is excited to provide the resources to turn their ideas into viable businesses.”
The Field Trip Class of Spring 2016 features everything from a wallet-sized inhaler and an app providing personalized travel itineraries to the self-proclaimed “Uber of recycling” and “Warby Parker of sofas.” This impressive roster of competing teams includes:
● Xperii (Boston College) – Boston Regional Winner
● Penn & Hunt (University of Pennsylvania) – Philadelphia Regional Winner
● Audiovert (Northwestern University)- Chicago Regional Winner
● The Space Research Company (CU Boulder)- Denver Regional Winner
● GiftAMeal (Washington University at St. Louis) – St. Louis Regional Winner
● Bottlerocket (University of California, Irvine) – Los Angeles Regional Winner
● Latitude (Brigham Young University)- National Wildcard Team
● Bloom (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)- National Wildcard Team
● NativX (Harvard University) – Southwest Travel Special Pitch Category Winner
● RePurpose (University of Pennsylvania)- Pivot Environmentalism Special Pitch Category Winner
Each Field Trip team will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Los Angeles, flights courtesy of Southwest®, for a two-day program of mentorship, learning, networking, and pitches. During the Startup Playground, the first day of this year’s Field Trip (June 8th), teams will demo their startup in a booth-style intimate setting where they’ll also display their startup’s explainer video, created with credits provided to the teams by Fiverr and its global marketplace of freelancers. Here, they’ll have the opportunity to network with and present their pitches to notable judges. The top three teams from the Startup Playground will advance to the Pitch Finals on June 9, where they will pitch their idea before notable judges, including:
● Justin Kan, Partner, Y Combinator
● Jonathan Neman, Co-Founder + Co-CEO, Sweetgreen
● Randy Sloan, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Southwest Airlines
“RECESS always works hard to promote entrepreneurship,” says Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator and one of the notable judges for Pitch Finals. “This competition specifically gives students an incentive to get started working on their company as they pitch their way to potentially earning a $250k prize and I look forward to see what they have come up with!”
The winner of the RECESS Pitch Finals will receive a full scholarship to Draper University, as well as access to the Amazon Web Services startup team, and a logo design package and up to 500 business cards from Logoworks. They will also receive automatic entry into the Capital Championship finals, and compete against the top three teams from the Capital Championship pitch competition for a chance to win the $250,000 cash prize.
Members of the public are encouraged and welcome to attend the Startup Playground and Pitch Finals. Door times and locations are:
● Startup Playground (Wednesday, June 8th- 6:00pm) @ ROC (604 Arizona, Santa Monica, CA 90401)
● Pitch Finals & After Party (Thursday, June 9th- 6:00pm) @ CTRL Collective (12575 Beatrice Street, Los Angeles, CA 90066)
To attend Startup Playground, RSVP at: http://smarturl.it/startupplayground
To attend the Pitch Finals and After Party, RSVP at: http://www.smarturl.it/pitchfinals
For more information on RECESS Field Trip, visit http://www.RECESSFIELDTRIP.com .
ABOUT RECESS:
RECESS Digital, Inc. was created to inspire and support next generation visionaries who will shape the future. It creates exclusive experiences for millennials – from nationwide entrepreneurial pitch competitions to concerts by the hottest acts in music. The company’s flagship event, the RECESS Music + Ideas Festival, is the only nationwide college campus tour that unites the brightest young minds with successful entrepreneurs through a bracket-format student startup pitch competition. More than 100,000 student participants on 55 campuses nationwide, including Cornell, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, have participated in previous RECESS events. Previous RECESS student entrepreneurs have gone on to raise aggregate seed funding of over $12 million from investors, such as Tim Draper, Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff and others.
RECESS was named one of Fast Company’s ‘Most Innovative Live Events Companies of 2016’ and has worked with world-leading brands, such as L’Oreal Paris, Microsoft, IBM and LinkedIn.
For more info visit www.RECESS.is.
Media Contact:
Jamie Brown for ROAM Communications
626-488-0732
[email protected]
