The temperature reached almost 100 degrees in Boston this week as six selected companies compete in the SmartCamp North American Finals. At 8.45pm last night in a very warm MassChallenge two companies where selected to represent North America in the world finals.
As always the mentors did a great job over 2 days helping the entrepreneurs think about the future of their business. In addition, there were a number of excellent master classes including
- Caroline Daniels – Babson College covered ‘Future Trends/Scaling for Growth’
- Paul McManus – Boston University covered ‘Strategic Partnerships’
- Charles Johnson – Choate Hall – covered ‘Negotiating w/ Venture Capitalists’
All were insightful and thought provoking. We moved onto the main event with David Kidder, fresh from selling Clickable. David’s presentation was inspiring – ‘you live in the top percentile of humanity – starting a company isn’t a big risk’. Following David, Claudia Fan Munce chaired a great VC panel including Neeraj Agrawal – Battery Ventures, Andy Goldfarb – Globespan Capital Partners and Mark Gorenberg – Hummer Winblad.
While the judges adjourned, Michael Rhodin presented Smarter Planet Trends before it was left to Jim Corgel to announce the winners:
Congratulations to SkyFoundry and StreetLight Data.
Both are amazing companies and entrepreneurs who embody our vision for a Smarter Planet. We look forward to working with John Petze, Laura Schewel over the com
My very special thanks to the IBM team who successfully ran 3 amazing SmartCamp events in 5 weeks. Next stop Bangalore India.
