sxswyabbly
Yabbly’s Tom Leung pitches at SxSW.

Down in Austin, Texas for the huge SxSW conference this past week, 48 of the country’s top startups competed in an Accelerator program and pitched to a nationally-recognized panel of judges.

Three of those companies hail from Seattle and here’s something that may surprise you: they are all in the consumer space.

Teams from Yabbly, LikeBright and DiscoveryJar were all in Austin competing in the “Social” category, one of six total. Yabbly made it the farthest to the top 3 finalists, but fell short of winning.

Tom Leung, founder and CEO of Yabbly, said it was important for the Emerald City to be represented at SxSW, especially in the consumer category.

“Seattle is not conventionally considered a hotbed of early-stage, consumer-focused startups but there’s an incredible amount of consumer-focused entrepreneurial activity percolating here in the Northwest,” he said. “Yabbly, LikeBright, and DiscoveryJar participating in this year’s SXSW Startup Accelerator is great evidence of Seattle’s recent momentum in the consumer startup space.”

Leung just penned a blog post about what he learned pitching at SxSW this year.  

“Just be prepared to put some of your normal day-to-day venture development on lower gear once you decide to enter one of these competitions,” he writes. “Feels like it’s worth doing one in your first year but I wouldn’t want to do too many of these for fear of optimizing the company for pitch competitions versus just killing our KPI’s.”

From why it’s good to travel to SxSW with friends to pacing yourself at the conferences, read more of Leung’s tips here.

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