Last week was Sacramento Pitch week! I attended all the events and was impressed with the quality of the presentations! It started with SVP Fast Pitch on Wednesday where 10 non-profits shared their stories and competed for the $15,000 top prize. The winner was 17-year old Victoria Manasyan from Kids Helping Kids Sacramento. She was amazing! Thursday night Kings Capitalize announced the winner at the Sacramento Kings Tech Night game at Golden 1 Center. Matt Magno and team from Japa won the $10,000 prize. On Friday, there were two pitch competitions — a StartupSac Warm-Up Pitch and the Future 4 & More competition student pitch — both hosted at the Carlsen Center at Sac State. Christine Sison, founder and CEO of Swiss Monkey, won the Warm-Up Pitch. There was no cash award but her prize package included the opportunity to pitch to Moneta Ventures (priceless!). The Future 4 & More competition featured college students from 6 different schools. The top spot went to Plastic to Life from Humboldt State. Not only did they win the First Prize award, they also won the Most Sustainable award and the People’s Choice award, taking home a grand total of $7,000! This company launched just a little over a month ago at a Startup Weekend! The second place team for Future 4 & More, New World Herbals, also launched at last month’s Startup Weekend Humboldt.

Which gives me a great segue to Startup Weekend Folsom! If you want to be a big winner too, sign up for this weekend’s Startup Weekend, happening at Granite City Coworking in historic Folsom! We’ve got a $25 off promo code for you (digest) and students don’t need a code to get a deep discount (more info here). You can bring an idea to Startup Weekend or you can join a team to work on someone else’s idea. Want to learn more? Join me tonight at 6 pm for a free workshop, Pitching Your Idea at Startup Weekend. It’s a great opportunity to get a feel for the flow of Startup Weekend.

We’re building community! The StartupSac Community Facebook Group has over 300 members. Now we need you!  Request to join here.

There’s lots of great stuff going on in the tech startup community–check out the details in this week’s Startup Digest. If you’d like to receive the digest in your inbox every Monday morning, sign up for free here. And for even more startup information, happenings and resources, browse  the  StartupSac Website.

If you’ve organized (or know about) an upcoming event that would be of interest to the startup community, please submit it here for consideration.