20Fathoms is pleased to announce the winners of the July 14 TCNewTech pitch competition.
Score Canvas won the First Place Award, receiving an award of $5000.
The Score Canvas pitch was presented by Ted Kocher. Video games are a $200 billion industry — bigger than music and movies combined — and the music behind them is a real, full-time job that almost no music school teaches. Students who want those jobs leave the field, because there is nowhere to learn the craft. The few programs that try to teach it have to license expensive professional software, set up game-development labs, and find a working industry pro willing to come teach — a cost stack out of reach for community colleges and high schools, and prohibitive even for top conservatories. Score Canvas removes all of that. It is a web browser, a curriculum, and a textbook in one product — and the schools that adopt it can teach this on day one.
At the event, 20Fathoms also announced its new Executive Director, Stacey Feeley, a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and trailblazer with more than two decades of experience launching, scaling, and leading purpose-driven companies. As co-founder and CEO of GoSili, Inc., Feeley built a global consumer products brand anchored in Traverse City, growing it through strategic partnerships, multiple funding rounds, and two successful acquisitions. She joins the organization at a pivotal time for the growing local BlueTech industry.
Ride Cave, Little Loop, and squarefoot.earth received $1000 finalist awards. Finalist awards recognize the time and energy that all pitch participants invest when pitching at TCNewTech. Ride Cave is the all-in-one platform where cyclists train, race, and connect. It’s the first to bring velodrome racing to the masses through immersive 3D track experiences, paired with AI coaching that adapts to your goals and a growing community that keeps riders connected. Little Loop is a mobile app that helps families of medically complex kids teach everyone who cares for their child — grandparents, sitters, school nurses, coaches — to do it the same way the parent does. squarefoot.earth is a video game platform where the game world maps 1:1 to real-world conservation projects with a goal of driving engagement, education, and fundraising. For the first time in TCNewTech history, all pitch participants were local to northwestern Michigan!
Applications are currently open to pitch at the September 29 event.
TCNewTech is made possible through the generosity of community partners including Presenting Partner SJA Solutions and Supporting Partners Honor Bank, Grand Valley State University, RJG, Inc., Huntington Bank, MSUFCU, Aurora Patents, and Incentmed IP.