San Diego Venture Group’s $20K PitchFest Dinner and Finalist Presentations

The San Diego Venture Group’s 11th Annual PitchFest provides an opportunity for early stage technology and life science companies to gain experience in refining their investor presentations and ultimately a chance at $20,000 in startup funding. The deadline for applications, which are free, are due Sept. 24. SDVG’s PitchFest selection committee, comprised of local business leaders, reviews all applications and selects 10 semifinalists, who then present their pitch in early November to a panel of top-tier venture capitalists. The VCs whittle the 10 semifinalists to three finalists, who are required to present their pitches to a general audience of more than 300 people at the SDVG’s December dinner event. The audience then votes to determine the winner, who gets a check for $20,000 that night. Get more information here.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.