Medsafe wins inaugural “Rocket City Launch” in Huntsville
We caught-up earlier in the week with Antonio Montoya, one of the organizers of last weekend’s “Rocket City Launch” in Huntsville, AL that we had previously spotlighted on teknovation.biz.
“It was an amazing weekend,” he said. “We had 45 people at our pitch night and 27 competitors.” Nearly one-third of the competitors – eight to be exact – were students.
Montoya reported that six teams were organized. When the dust settled, Med Safe took first place in the competition. The company is developing an innovative consumer product for patients needing special medication.
“Medsafe was selected as the winner given the amazing market potential and benefit to patients and the economy,” Montoya said in describing the views of the panel of judges.
The winner garnered three sponsor awards – $5,000 in information technology services from Rainspace Computing, $5,000 of media services from ONEUNITY Media, and a one-year membership in MindGear Labs.
Second place went to Disaster and Emergency Response Situational Awareness (DERSA), a crowdsourced geospatial solution for emergency response. The third place winner was Pick Your Pilot, a start-up developing a revolutionary telepresence solution based on Unmanned Aircraft System platforms.
The “People’s Choice Award” went to DIY Freeze Dry, a start-up focused on an open source Freeze Dry toolkit and community.
Other participating teams were TiRoot, developing a lightweight and simple to use anchoring system, and Rocket City Starters, a start-up developing community portal for other start-ups.
In addition to the competition itself, Montoya noted that “this event was not only about great ideas and hard work. Many wonderful locals connected and became fast friends, colleagues and mentors.”
More information can be found on the “Rocket City Launch” facebook page as well as the web page. More detailed summaries about each start-up can be found here.
