Launchathon

Hello Friends of LAUNCH, Hope you all are staying safe and healthy!  Boy, its a crazy world out there. But, I know I've seen hope in the fact that everyone is trying to find normalcy in these trying times. Despite our ongoing battle with Covid-19 its been inspiring to see the startup ecosystem adapt and pitch in to help solve these pressing problems. At LAUNCH we are doing are best to keep calm and hack on :). Which is why we were proud to host our Virtual Launchathon (Launch's hackathon) this past weekend.  As you can see in the pictures above, our teams are pressing forward with innovative solutions to help their startup scale into the stratosphere.  Canbiance, which won the 1st price for Creative Problem Solving, pivoted to our current needs in fine style. Its new line of CBD hand-sanitizer may be the perfect solution to stay even-keel while doing your part to flatten the curve!

Our 2nd prize for Creative Problem Solving went to Shunique. Shunique is trying to create an easy-to-use mass-market custom shoe solution using 3d printing techniques. They came up with a fantastic rebrand for their product- to help make their products the Tesla of footwear!

Sike Insights won 1st prize for Goal Achievement. They are premiering a fantastic application that can be embedded into slack, which will use AI to give remote teams best-practices for inter-group communication. It doesn't hurt that they are calling their Slackbot Kona. Who wouldn't want a cute puppy helping your remote team gel? Finally, CarpeMed won 2nd prize for Goal Achievement. They premiered a beautiful walk-through of their app- which provides secure and vetted medical resources for tourists. When world travel ramps up again it may be  CarpeMed's moment to shine!

You'll be seeing more in-depth profiles of these teams in the next few newsletters. So, look out for that soon!

Here is what to look out for in the coming weeks: DEMO DAY: Ticket sales will open April 1st! Get em early, you won’t want to miss our top companies delivering their polished pitches. BOOTCAMP 2: This is where we’ll finalize our top teams for Demo Day, so look out for the newsletter that will follow, where you will find out who among our 25 startups will move forward. NEWSLETTER: We’ll be sending out a newsletter similar to this each week. In addition to updating all of you on LAUNCH events, we’ll also have a special treat: Startup Intros! Each startup in our program will submit their business thesis, website and a video. The video will show off their product, their team and show our founders talking about their most recent insight on how to further scale up their business.