Shark Tank: Pitch Edition {Sponsored by Verizon}

Ever seen the show ‘Shark Tank’? We’re bringing the hit series to life at this month’s Tech in Motion DC event! Join us as 5 local startups pitch their products to a panel of respected local entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, etc. This event will specifically spotlight companies local to the DC tech scene looking to make a name for themselves, who will receive constructive feedback on their pitch, the market viability of their product, and other constructive input.

Our Shark Tank will be held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, located at 12012 Sunset Hills Road. There will be pizza and soda available for this event.

Event Schedule

6:00pm- 6:45pm Networking

7:00pm- 8:15pm Pitches

8:15pm- 8:45 Audience Q&A

8:45pm Judge favorite announced

Meet our Sharks

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Leo X. (Lex) McCusker, PhD, is the Director of the New Venture Competition at George Washington University. Previously, he was Dean of the Business School at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.

Prior to joining Stevens Institute, Dr. McCusker worked for 23 years at AT&T and Bell Laboratories in software development, professional technology services, technology licensing and intrapreneurship. He was CEO of the AT&T text-to-speech startup, Natural VoicesTM.

He is also an angel investor and member of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Keiretsu Forum.

Lex holds a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Dartmouth College.

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Andrew Der joined Verizon Ventures in 2013 and focuses on strategic marketing and business development for the firm. Andrew has over 10 years of experience in innovation, strategy, digital marketing, and emerging technologies, focusing primarily on consumer products and web / mobile products. Before coming to Verizon Ventures, he was the Senior Manager of Digital Strategy & Innovation at American Express and worked at futurethink, Coty, EffectiveBrands, and Aon Hewitt. Andrew received his BBA in Corporate Strategy & International Business from the University of Michigan.

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Evan MacQueen is a Vice President at Core Capital Partners, having joined in 2011 and focuses on investments in the analytics, cloud, cyber-security, mobile, and technology infrastructure spaces.

Previously, Evan was an Associate at BIA Digital Partners, a family of mezzanine funds focusing on the media, telecommunications, and technology-enabled services sectors.

Evan is a mentor at Acceleprise, an active member of the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, and a frequent speaker and panelist on venture capital and entrepreneurship. He also heads VC in DC, a networking group for DC-area investors at DC-area seed, venture, and growth investors.

Evan holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Washington and Lee University.

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Andrew Winslow joined Grotech Ventures in 2013 and is a Vice President at the firm. He focuses primarily on investment opportunities in software, e-commerce, healthcare IT, and payments. Andrew is an active board observer for Healthcare Interactive, Parse.ly, Passport, SpotRight and White Ops. Prior to joining Grotech Ventures, Andrew was an Associate at WestView Capital Partners, a middle market private equity firm. Previously he was an Associate at Summit Partners, a venture capital and private equity firm.

Andrew received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance along with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame.

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Conor Sibley

Conor has been involved with e-commerce and business enabling technology since the 1990s. His in-depth knowledge of software, business and technology comes from designing and implementing emerging technologies as an advisor to and an executive at startups, multiple successful angel investments and contracting with various branches of the military and intelligence community.

Conor puts his knowledge to work at Higher Logic, where he leads his team in implementation of software solutions designed with clients’ needs in mind.

In the past he served as a Network Security Engineer with BBN Technologies, the organization that architected the Internet and first e-mail technologies. Conor graduated with a B.S. from the University of Virginia after completing the requirements for both Electrical and Computer Engineering and he received his MBA from University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business.

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Meet our pitch companies

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Sympli

The 1-click solution to put Designers and Developers on the same page! Sympli (http://sympli.io/) is a collaboration tool for mobile designers and developers that eliminates typical back-and-forth communication between designers and developers throughout the app development process. For designers, Sympli provides plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Sketch to export assets, creating dynamic visual specifications of design to share with the developer.

For developers, Sympli provides a single entry point to the latest versions of designs, tailored to the specific mobile platform with ready to use assets, visual specification in platform specific units, and tools that make application of the latest designs easier.

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Ottomate

Ottomate (http://ottomate.co/) is a smart home system that learns from you and cuts your energy usage. Unlike many smart home products, Ottomate doesn’t require any manual programming—it learns the habits of those in the household and controls the electricity in the home accordingly. Ottomate’s patent-pending technology is also intuitive - in addition to learning users’ habits, it automatically adjusts as those habits change.

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Visybl

Visybl is an Enterprise IoT startup developing an asset-awareness solution. The Visybl solution is designed around iPhone and Android, and will bring the simplicity and immediacy of the smartphone experience to a core business problem every Enterprise faces, every day.

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Sound Off

Unfortunately, today’s veterans and active service members often face obstacles in getting the healthcare they need, especially when it comes to mental health. Sound Off (http://sound-off.com/), a non-profit funded by a veteran of the US intelligence community, focuses on solving this problem. Sound Off is developing an IT platform that allows veterans and active service members seeking mental health support to connect anonymously with mental health specialists working pro-bono, as well as with other veterans, with the opportunity for repeat contact. This allows those seeking help to develop ongoing relationships and a peer support network, while maintaining anonymity, like never before. Historically, there has never been a way for those seeking help to speak anonymously and repeatedly with the same individual. While crisis hotlines allow for anonymous support, it is one time contact; there is no ongoing relationship developed with the clinician on the phone. Hence, while the service member or veteran may be talked down from the acute crisis, they have no system for ongoing treatment. Separately, while attempts to develop one-to-one peer support networks have been made within the veteran community, they have generally failed or not scaled. Sound Off allows veterans to connect with mental health specialists within minutes of registration and hopefully alleviate post-traumatic stress.

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Rhombus

Rhombus (https://www.getrhombus.com/) helps businesses exchange real-time text messages, and accept payments from customers – all within the conversation.

We’re building a human and AI powered commerce platform that connects individuals with businesses asynchronously using text messages. Smart phone or not, customers can chat with local businesses and service providers via SMS, and complete transactions by simply texting the Rhombus phone number assigned to the business.

With Rhombus, businesses can easily respond to support questions, sales inquiries, schedule appointments, or take orders from the messaging dashboard -- no phone calls required. We’ve built the best way to engage customers in real-time, and complete transactions.

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More about Verizon

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Verizon is at the center of today’s connected world, working independently and with tech industry partners to put simple, yet incredibly powerful digital tools in the hands of our customers. With the nation’s most advanced and reliable FiOS fiber-optic and 4G LTE mobile networks, Verizon’s customers enjoy the benefits of the digital lifestyle, while we provide the communities we serve with new ways to prosper and grow in the Internet Age – connecting them to the global economy, expanding access to opportunity, and offering new approaches to the challenges of health care, education and environmental sustainability.

Verizon’s 100% fiber-optic FiOS network delivers market-leading broadband speed – with symmetric upload and download throughput – as well as brilliant HD TV service to homes in parts of 12 states and the District of Columbia. Our unique wireless, broadband and cloud assets give us the ability to do what others can’t: deliver truly integrated connected solutions that work across all devices and platforms.

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