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Can you summarize your startup company in one simple sentence? It may seem easy, but it’s hard to craft something punchy and memorable in a few words. As Mark Twain once famously quipped: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

With that in mind, GeekWire and the Founder Institute asked entrepreneurs this past weekend to submit their best one sentence business pitches in the comment thread of this post.

Founder Institute creator Adeo Ressi provided feedback along the way, pointing out some helpful hints on how entrepreneurs could better summarize what they do.

Pradeep Chauhan

But who did Ressi actually like the best? And who wins the top prize — a scholarship to the Spring program of the Founder Institute and Startup Spotlight feature in GeekWire?

Well, the wait is over.

After careful deliberation and analysis, Ressi says his top pick from the weekend long competition and the winner of the scholarship is former Microsoftie Pradeep Chauhan.

Here was Chauhan’s pitch:

“Our company is developing an online community and marketplace for IT/software consultants to discover the best available contract positions based on user reviews of client companies, their preferred vendors, the jobs, and billing rates.”

Short. Simple. And to the point.

Ressi tells us that the pitch was “well constructed” and the target market was clear. Here’s more of his analysis:

There was an understandable need, discover the best available contract positions, and there is a hint at a unique approach with the user generated reviews.

The real opportunity is in the trends. More and more companies are hiring contract labor as a means to control costs, but they don’t readily advertise these positions like they do with jobs. Meanwhile, there are multiple sources to get a sense of what it is like to work at a company full-time, but there is limited information on how companies treat contractors.

While most review sites have difficulty making money, this one may have a viable model. Paid listings for contract opportunities seems like it can work, especially since it makes sense for companies to put these listing on a site where the contractors come, leaving the full-time positions on their own sites.

Everything worked nicely with this business, though it was a close call with a handful of other entries. The pitch was solid, the trends favored the idea, and there seemed to be viable model.

Here are some of the honorable mentions as chosen by Ressi:

My company, Roundtable, is a social decision platform for Type A moms and dads to make considered parenting choices with input from friends through shareable polling widgets, private collaboration pinboards, and a directory of friends who’ve made similar choices in the past.  Parenting is hard…but your friends can help.

My company quikStarts is developing an application that helps product support teams in companies of all sizes, create step by step instructions on the web, to reduce operating cost.

My  company, quesume, is developing a social network to help employers and college students solve the problem of the “networking and skills divide”  by supplying a social network  for employers to offer real life case studies for students to apply  and get feedback on during each of their college  years.

My company, SIDCO is developing an assisted living automation appliance to enable medical institutions, along with the family and friends with smartphones or tablets to remotely monitor and assist the ageing population, thereby enabling the elderly to live comfortably in their own dwellings by easily interacting with the state of the art appliance using Natural User Interface.


[Typewriter photo via Bigstock]

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