AbbeyPost takes the win and Travelling Spoon, a foodie startup, earned the People’s Choice Award. Read on to see what services our finalists will be bringing to you!
By Jessica Stillman (Editor, Women 2.0)
After hearing incredible pitches from ten female-founded companies over the two incredible days of our conference in Las Vegas last week, the judging panel had their work cut out for them. But the panel of top investors did indeed come to a conclusion and crowned one fashion-forward startup as the winner: AbbeyPost.
The Winner of PITCH
AbbeyPost, a “Etsy for Plus Size” founded by second-time founder (and pitch ace) Cynthia Schames and her co-founder and CTO Lex Mustafin, will be receiving a meeting with Shanna Tellerman and Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, a meeting with Angel Investor Esther Dyson, six months of free office space provided by Silicon Valley Pad, $12,000 worth of cloud services from Rackspace and the CEO will receive a lifetime CLEAR pass (to fly through airport security).
“I’ve been a PITCH Judge with Women 2.0 for three years in a row and each year the companies get stronger, more interesting and more promising. Abbey Post is addressing a huge market and I’m excited to see them tackle it,” Judge and Head of Digital Ventures at BBC Worldwide Jenny Fielding commented.
Besides catering to a larger and under-served market (valued at $18 billion and growing), AbbeyPost also impressed the judges with its “proprietary tech twist,” a special sizing technology that allows women to measure themselves for the best fit possible in the privacy of their own homes.
Partner at Union Square Ventures and judge Albert Wenger commented that AbbeyPost is “moving fashion to made-to-measure by starting with a highly underserved segment.”
Schames sold herself as the right founder to attack this opportunity, noting her background which includes 10+ years of enterprise software sales experience at VC-backed startups and a sting as the founder of La Boite Orange. She is also a startup advisor and mentor, a 2014 Startup Leadership Program Fellow, and the Founders Network Peer Accountability Leader for the NYC Chapter.
Congrats Abbey Post! We’re excited to see what’s ahead for you!
The People’s Choice Award
Women 2.0 crowned not only an overall winner selected by the judges, but also recognized a second finalist as the audience favorite. Using an interactive meeting technology from Australian startup Zeetings, we polled the audience to get their pick for most promising startup, which turned out to be none other than Traveling Spoon!
Co-founded by Aashi Vel and Steph Lawrence, the Travelling Spoon app connects people with authentic home-made meals while they are traveling. Traveling Spoon came about as a result of passion the two women have for authentic food and meaningful travel while getting their MBAs at UC Berkeley’s Haas business school.
Traveling Spoon will also get six months of office space at PAD, $12,000 worth of Rackspace cloud services and the CEO will also receive a lifetime pass of CLEAR. All remaining eight participants will get three months of office space at PAD.
Congrats again to everyone who participated in PITCH! We loved hearing about all of your startups and can’t wait to see what the future holds for you all!
Jessica Stillman (@entrylevelrebel) is an editor at Women 2.0 and a freelance writer with interests in unconventional career paths, generational differences, and the future of work. She writes a daily column for Inc.com, contributes regularly to Forbes and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch, GigaOM and Brazen Careerist, among others.
