Yesterday, Portland Ten, Stoel Rives, FundingUniverse, and NedSpace sponsored the first Lunch 2.0 to feature another event, livepitching.
Turns out, there was another unintentional first. No lunch, or rather late lunch.
I’ll take the blame here for not realizing in advance our hosts had ordered the pizza to arrive after the livepitching, rather than at noon. Unfortunately, several people left hungry, and I know you can’t all take a full two hours away from work for lunch.
Apologies. Ryan, of eROI our host in September and upstairs neighbor of NedSpace, assured me that he will have lunch ready to go well before noon.
Luckily, I think Backspace benefited, so let’s just say we were stimulating the local economy.
Anyway, those who stayed for the livepitching got a unique chance to see elevator-style pitches from entrepreneurs as well as feedback from a seasoned panel of experts including Brock Blake from FundingUniverse, Ashleigh Williams from Willamette Venture Group, Eric Pozzo from Oregon Angel Fund, Todd Bauman from Stoel Rives, and Carolynn Duncan from Portland Ten.
Congrats to all five companies that pitched and to JourneyGym the lucky company selected by the panel to receive the prize pack of startup professional services from Stoel Rives, FundingUniverse, and Portland Ten. Carolynn has more details over at Portland Ten.
Since I spent the better part of an hour manning the door to let people into the building, I don’t have much to recap, and I didn’t get a full list of the five companies who pitched. I’ll update once I get that list.
Update: The other companies presenting were: Bright Neighbor, BioAlgene, SpiritWorks Software, and Optical Specialists.
By the time the food arrived and the pitching ended, people started the usual networking part of Lunch 2.0, and even though I couldn’t stick around to enjoy it, I think a fun time was had by all.
One last programming note, Portland Lunch 2.0 is running short of future hosts. Maybe Lunch 2.0 has run its course here in Portland, maybe I’m a lazy organizer, maybe it’s the economy or Drew’s Cancer. All of the above?
Anyway, if you want to help out or have suggestions, drop a comment (or tweet @jkuramot). It’s easy to do.
Maybe Network Redux will be interested. Did you notice they’re handing out goodies at Beer and Blog tomorrow?
Don’t forget this Lunch 2.0, coming soon:
- September 16 at eROI
Big thanks to all the past hosts.
(Image courtesy Carolynn Duncan. Used with permission.)
Comments are closed.
Great event this week, but yes, we will learn from the late lunch feedback and make sure to have food here before noon at the next Lunch 2.0 on Sep 16 at eROI. Thanks so much for hosting Lunch 2.0 in the building. Old Town is becoming the center of the Portland universe for startups, tech entrepreneurs, and creatives. Great to see this movement come into its own.
Cheers,
Ryan
eROI
No worries. I think the venting over Twitter was just that nothing more, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t ignore the feedback. Like I said, I could have done more diligence to ensure the food was there earlier.
Jake,
Our most sincere apologies for not having the lunch there at 12 noon. We’re especially saddened to hear a few had to leave without lunch! Not being locals, we were new to the Lunch2.0 scene and so for that, we apologize.
For those that waited, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did. We learned a lot by the 5 companies’ presentations and met some fascinating people. We hope to be able to do it again — especially since we (FundingUniverse) are looking to expand to Portland permanently.
It was great to partner with Lunch2.0, Stoel Rives, Nedspace, and PortlandTen!