The May Report: 7/26/2011: Bulletin: Two women owned firms dominate in the winners of the midVenturesLAUNCH COMPETE competition between 35 firms and The People’s Choice award for the demo firms with 14 firms competing. Babbaco and Dabble.com win the categories

Editor and publisher: Ron May, ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.

If you missed an article, go here: www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Scoop section:

– Briefly noted, by Ron May
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The Scoop section:
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Briefly noted, by Ron May

* I have to get this out and get to dialysis. What a four day period!

Well, so much for that plan. That was written at about 5:30am. I did not get it out in time this morning and they go nuts when I am late.
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The five firms that made the finals out of the 35 companies in the COMPETE contest were:
1. www.BabbaCo.com

Founder and CEO, Jessica Nam Kim
Space is toys and other things for 2 to 5 year olds

2. www.getchute.com
Co-founder Ranvir Gujral
Space is Twilo for pictures
Seeking $750K, and btw, Lon Chow talked to me for a long time last night and he did disclose to the other judges that he intends to invest in this firm, but he did not recuse himself from judging them. I’ll give you his whole argument later, along with what he said about other subjects.

3. www.gtrot.com
Founders Brittany and Zach, I have to find their cards for last names
Funded by Lightbank, competing with True Advisor, which just bought Where I’ve Been, also funded by Lightbank.

4. Forecast, foreca.st
I can’t find the founder’s name

5. SafetyBook, www.safetybook.com
Dan Verakis, co-founder
I like Dan, but I think his idea of providing info. on sex offenders which would be provided through the data bases that Aneesh Chopra would provide is way off track. As Dan said to me, there is a great deal of variability state by state in the data and
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And the winner was www.babbaco.com

The prizes total about $100K and that includes some in-kind services that go to all the finalists such as the Marengo offer of $50K in recruiting services that will break down to $10K per firm. If my calculations are right, the actual cash is $3,500 for the winner.
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People’s Choice Award for the Demo firms:

In the People’s Choice vote for the most popular Demo table, the winner was
www.dabble.com [sic: Editor's note: correction made at 10:21pm, 7/26/11: www.dabblehq.com ]run by two women. I say that because the sub theme of the conference was women owned companies. Dabble charges $20 for folks to take classes on a wide variety of topics. Teachers are self-generated. Locations vary. Dabble takes $10 per person and the rest goes to the teacher.

My sources say the close runner-up was www.bromance.com [sic: Editor's note: correction on 7/26/11: www.bromance.me ]
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The S.P.A.R.K. finalists were:
www.careerli.com
www.codemountain.org
www.duckduckdish.com [They were presented as Foodies to the audience]

From the site which shows a picture of all the finalists
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www.sparkchi.com/2011/07/congratulations-spark-chicago-finalists/

XOXO!
HUGE thanks goes out to our judges, Scott Rutherford from UserVoice, Troy Henikoff from Excelerate Labs, Gabe Greenbaum from OCA Ventures, Millie Tadewaldt from Sandbox Industries, Jeff Maters from New World Ventures, and Bill Houston from Hyde Park Angles.

And of course, big hugs to our partners Chicago Startup Weekend – Chris Campbell and Mark Bertrand – for their expert (and fun) execution of Startup Weekend.

What next?
The three teams will report to either Doejo, Obtiva, and Pathfinder to undergo major development, incubation, and mentoring for the next three days. On Wednesday they’ll pitch once more for the final competition.

Don’t miss out on SPARK Chicago 2011 Finals and a kickass keynote from Mitch Lowe, President of RedBox. Wednesday, July 27 @ 5:00 PM. You need to RSVP to attend!

See you there!
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* Much more to come. Matt McCall gave me an impassioned (OK, Matt does not do impassioned, but he does do logical and analytical) defense of what New World is doing with Kevin Willer and seed funding and I’ll have all that for you, but now I must go. Just to whet your whistle, Matt threw this tidbit out. Of all the New World Ventures investments, nine are owned by or co-founded by women.

[Now here is where the "old" Ron May clashes with the "new" Ron May that Lon Chow would like to see. I was going to write that it is ironic that such should be the case in a VC firm with no female partners and a firm that pushed out its only female partner, Lisa Flashner, years ago. And Ellen Carnahan, you know that is true. But as the "new" Ron May, I won't write that.

I have not even broached the subject of Penelope Trunk's (that is her forth name, btw) talk which dealt heavily with the issue of women entrepreneurs. More on that next time.

Maybe I'll be Mr. Snidely in just one report a week. Len Bland is breathing easier with that. BTW, Ray Markman showed up yesterday and Dave Carman was there, but no Len.

Sorry, J.B., Chris, Matt, Adam, Jeff, and Rishi, I'm just cursed with knowing too much.]
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END OF REPORT