Recap: Built in Chicago's September Pitch Event

by Monique Montagnese
September 6, 2012

Five recently launched startups presented their ideas to a packed room full of 350 investors, fellow entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts at last night's Built in Chicago September event. This month's pitches were supplemented by one-sentence elevator pitches from a few startups graduating from Excelerate Labs.

Sparked by the high demand for tickets to the annual demo day last week, an event reserved for investors and mentors only, Excelerate announced its decision to do a community demo day this year. Held on September 18th at Second City, the community demo day will showcase these entrepreneur’s impressive ideas to the public.

Excelerate is seeing more of a global reach and has been attracting entrepreneurs from all over the world.

“We drew teams from the largest geography ever, including India and France,” said Troy Heinkoff, the CEO and co-founder of Excelerate. More information about the community demo day can be found here.

Here's a snapshot of which startup companies presented last night.

Mobile Makers
Mobile Makers strives to build craftsmen in mobile development industry through a 10-week training program. Focused solely on mobile development technologies, Mobile Makers gives developers the proper skills, knowledge and experience to build beautiful, native apps from scratch. In the inaugural class they will offer studio hours and one-on-one mentorship with seasoned mobile developers in addition to class time to help turn developers into masters of the iOS and Android platforms. For more info on Mobile Makers check our our interview with founder Dave Hoover.

DinnDinn

The founders of DinnDinn are trying to tap into the social sharing of food photos, an industry that has taken off thanks to Instagram, with a new app that is described as a virtual fridge. Co-founders Kyler Juckins and Jeremy Markham, two 19-year-old entrepreneurs, are taking a lighthearted approach with their app that includes a “virtual tongue”  where users can customize their food preferences and labels in-app friends as “taste buds.” The DinnDinn platforms also allows users to see what restaurant dishes look like before they order, follow friends, celebrities and food connoisseurs to see what they love or hate and express their personal opinions on all things food related.

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