Over 50 Startups applied to the Startup World Cup Sacramento Regional Competition. 10 finalists were selected to compete at the Regional Competition held at the Rock & Brews. Pitches were limited 2 minutes followed by 6 minutes of questions from the judges.
The Winner is…
The voting was close but in the end, JAPA won in a field of innovative and promising startups and will represent the Sacramento Region at the Startup World Cup Semifinals and Grand Finale happening in San Francisco September 28-30.
JAPA (which stands for Just A Parking App) is a platform that transforms parking lots to SMART parking lots. The platform consists of a proprietary hardware and software and has already been deployed to several California campuses. Through an app, a user can identify where there is available parking using real time data. Mathew Magno, JAPA’s CEO, explained that one of the reasons of their rapid growth is because of channel partners like Siemens.
StartupSac interviewed Mathew in 2020. You can watch the interview here.
The Other Finalists
The other finalists that participated in the competition are:
The Judging Panel
The judging panel for the competition was selected from local venture capital firms and angel investing organizations. They include Moneta Ventures managing partner, Lokesh Sikaria, Growth Factory founding partner, Mark Haney, Jaguar Ventures founder, Kevin Nagle. and Sacramento Angels Chairman, John Peters.
Event organizer, Charlotte Danielsson-Chang, said the event was a big success and expects the competition to return to Sacramento next year.
The Startup World Cup is sponsored by Pegasus Tech Ventures and the Sacramento event is organized in partnership by the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA).
