Over the course of 54 hours last weekend, five teams of aspiring entrepreneurs convened at Granite City Coworking in historic Folsom for the region’s most recent Startup Weekend event.

The event kicked off on Friday evening with 16 ideas being pitched by attendees. After voting, 5 teams formed organically around the top-ranked ideas that were pitched. Over the weekend these teams worked to develop the ideas into viable businesses. The event culminated Sunday evening when each team presented a 5 minute pitch to a panel of judges.

Event metrics:

  • 26 attendees
  • 16 ideas pitched
  • 5 teams formed
  • 13 sponsors

Competing Teams – in the order that they pitched on Demo Day

OptiSpeed

OptiSpeed is working to solve traffic jam problems by optimizing the speed that traffic goes in a traffic jam by determining the optimal driving speed of the cars and communicating that speed to the drivers through a mobile app.

EVLife

The EVLife team plans to create an automated lead generation platform for EV car sales. The platform will connect buyers to sellers with content, tools, and resources like a simulator app to analyze the user’s driving for a week to show them that their driving range is within parameters of electric vehicles, thereby reducing anxiety about committing to an EV.

Easy Read

Easy Read is working to bring more reading content to dyslexic readers using a dyslexic-friendly font. The startup offers a platform with a conversion service to convert content into Dyslexie Font, a unique font for people with dyslexia, and publish that content.

Dream Machine

Dream machine is developing  an electronic industry B2B manufacturing-as-a-Service platform to connect customers to manufacturers, leveraging a Southeast Asia manufacturing supply chain network cultivated over the years by one of the team members.

Task Gorilla

The idea behind Task Gorilla is to have your friends and family hold you accountable for your to-do lists with an app to “help you nail your tasks by exploiting accountability from your friends.”

Winning Teams

First Place: EVLife

 

Second Place: Dream Machine

 

Third Place: OptiSpeed

We may have only had 3 levels for awards, but as far as we are concerned, every team was a winner! Check out more photos from the event on the event Instagram channel.

Throughout the event, facilitator Michael Ryan Norton brought a high energy, engaging vibe to the weekend making it an experience that all who participated will never forget. Thank you Michael for doing such a fantastic job!

Facilitator Michael Ryan Norton congratulates the participants on their hard work throughout the weekend.

In addition to Michael, a big thank you to everyone that helped to make this event happen:

Venue Host: Kyle Middleton & Granite City Coworking
Organizers: Jaimie Asakawa, Mandie Barthelow, Jeff Bennett, Alicia Garcia, Laura Good, Peggy Good, Arwa Houry, Alina Lujan DeCastro, John Nogrady
Volunteers: Bri DeCastro, Ryan Foreman, Jay DeCastro, Kathleen Casela
Speaker: Peichen Chang
The Judges: Barbara DeHart, Brandon Robinson, Hemant Vaidya
The Coaches: Allen Archuleta, Dan Casas-Murray, Alex Chompff, Katherine Cota, Jubal DeLong, Jake Elia, Christine Folck, Rich Foreman, Hemel Gandhi, Marcus Grindstaff, Kevin Kane, Kyle Kaneshiro, Sonny Mayugba, Josh Miller
The Sponsors: Comstock’s Magazine, Granite City Coworking, Apptology, Nivagen, UC Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Choose Folsom, Five Star Bank, Greater Sacramento Economic Council, SMUD, Weintraub Tobin, StartupSac, Startup Grind and 1 Million Cups

Since 2013, Startup Weekend events have been a key element of the Sacramento startup community, providing aspiring entrepreneurs a no-risk opportunity to test drive their innovative ideas. Feeling bad that you missed out? Don’t worry, Startup Weekend Sustainable Revolution is happening June 21-23 at Up Cycle Pop in Sacramento. Registration is opening later this week but you can sign up now to be notified as soon as it opens AND receive a discount coupon!