If you’re a wine startup seeking to get in front of some
high-profile people with connections and capital, better take note of
the Wine 2.0 Business Plan competition.
It’s coming to an end tonight at midnight. Last year’s winner – Crushpad – went on to raise $9 million in funding.
The winner will get a one-hour session with each of the judges.
The judges are Heidi Roizen, founder of Skinny Songs, former partner at Mobius Venture Capital; Richard Rosenblatt, CEO, Demand Media; Bowen Osbourn, M&A, Demand Media; Gary Vaynerchuk, star of Wine Library TV, Alan Citron, executive at Buzznet and J. Smoke Wallin, chairman of Wine 2.0, the wine social networking and events company that is hosting the competition.
With fewer than 12 hours to go, here’s the current standing, based on community votes.
With the most votes so far is Curiosk Marketing Solutions,
a wine marketing company. Curiosk has developed a kiosk that resides in
wine and liquor retailers. The kiosk allows consumers to scan a wine
bottle, and create personalized cards that have pre-filled information
about the wine, such as characteristics and suggested pairings. Curiosk jumps to first place with 102 votes, up from third place last year.
Multineer Magazine jumps to second place with 78 votes. This isn’t surprising that we’d see a newcomer join the competition (Multineer joined in the last week), and drive the votes to get itself highlighted and noticed!
Vinobilla,
which had the most votes just a week ago, is now in third place with votes. This startup essentially developed a tool to
identify the characteristics of wine, enabling the attributes to be
more visual and understood by consumers. No more guessing whether the
wine has earth tones, no tannins, and a smooth finish, while shopping
at, say, Whole Foods. This looks like a consumer-friendly, and easy way
to learn about wines.
Vinogusto, Bibola.com, and WomenWine are now in fourth through fifth place, in terms of the popular vote.
Keep in mind that the popular vote will be considered with the judges’
votes. So the company with the most votes won’t necessarily be the
winner – though the votes, followers, and comments will be hard to ignore.
Here’s the link to the Wine 2.0 competition.
