Sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting to be collected to take me to the airport. It's been a real rollercoaster ride for both the teams and the staff. The final two days were pretty manic, so now I've remembered to breath, let me fill you in.
On Monday, Chris Gill from San Hill Angels, brought along three VCs from Silicon Valley to watch the team presentations and give feedback to them. This was a pretty big deal, it was Presidents Day here in the US, so these guys were giving up their free time to be here, and it was a great experience for the teams to pitch in front of VCs with experience.
The VCs point scoring was so very close, but Mexico came out on top, demonstrating how far the Mexican team had come considering they had thrown away their application when they arrived here two weeks ago. Poland came in very closely during the VC pitch, and it was apparent that the Polish team had made an impression on the judges on the final day as they took a landslide 'virtual dollar' investment which pushed them to the top of the standings.
So Poland won the 'business readiness' award with the largest virtual dollar budget at the end of the competition. There was one more award to give out, and after discussions with the BT staff and final day judges the innovation award went to South Korea.
We really felt that the South Korea team had really come the furthest, and had applied the business learning to their presentations. We also felt that the product they had built could make a huge difference to so many peoples's lives.
I hope everyone had a great time over these few weeks and that for those reading this blog, I hope you found this useful and interesting. I'll continue to post videos and photos from the event, so stay tuned....
