Lauren Lake and Mallorie Brodie, co-founders of Waterloo Region's Bridgit, took top prize at Google for Entrepreneur's inaugural Demo Day: Women's Edition.
The event was spurred by the fact that female founders get just 3-4 percent of the venture captial pie, despite the amazing companies they're building globally. To be eligible to compete, the startups needed at least one female founder and to be actively raising a Series A round between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000.
Google for Entrepreneurs received 450 applications from over 40 countries, and Bridgit was among the 11 female-led startups invited to Silicon Valley for the pitch competition. Companies arrived from Spain, Mexico, Israel, the US, the UK, Brazil and South Korea to compete, with Bridgit serving as Canada's only representation.
"It was a difficult decision with so many talented companies," said Mary Grove, Director of Google for Entrepreneurs, as she called Bridgit's founders to the stage to receive the Judge's Prize.
"We were really impressed with the company overall," said judge Sharon Vosmek, CEO of Astia since 2007. "You had great traction elements, you had great customer conversations, a really strong sales approach that we appreciated, and you're out there in the market doing some really exciting stuff. That was my observation."
"One thing that really stood out was how you're approaching customer acquisition and growth just generally very scale-ably, especially in an industry that's so fragmented where it's very hard to sell," said Christine Tsai, Founding Partner at 500 Startups. "But talking about how you're automating the sales process, lead generation, you're scraping to find addresses... and then from there a very systematic sales process and how you're closing the deal, that was very good."
"I was really impressed," said Charles Hudson, a Managing Partner with Precursor Ventures. "I was telling the other judges, I've met about 20-25 companies in construction tech lately and I thought you had the cleanest, clearest go-to-market approach I've seen out of anyone. It's also really cool, having met you before, to see that you did exactly what you said you'd do from the time I met you. It's impressive to see the growth."
Read more about Bridgit here.
