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Ignition Partners’ John Connors congratulates EdRepublic CEO Shahzad Umar.

It’s not easy for tech companies to lock down talented developers, but a new Seattle startup wants to help.

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Team EdRepublic.

A panel of venture capitalists picked EdRepublic as the winner of the GeekWire Startup Day 2015 pitch contest on Friday at the Showbox Sodo. EdRepublic is a cloud platform that evaluates software development skills using analytics that calculate a suitability index for recruiters.

“We help technical companies hire better and more efficiently, saving them time and money,” said CEO Shahzad Umar.

Ignition Partners’ John Connors — who judged the pitches with DFJ’s Bill Bryant and Maveron’s Jason Stoffer — said that he and his fellow venture capitalists liked how EdRepublic was fixing a clear problem that tech companies face today.

“Every company is becoming a software company, and every company is really struggling with finding, assessing, and securing talent for technical hires,” Connors said. “We thought there could potentially be a real opportunity here and it’s extensible to other technically-oriented jobs that are hard to assess in just an interview.”

EdRepublic assigns a score to potential applicants based on historic data from platforms like GitHub and LinkedIn. The startup has also developed a platform to test software development skills that also is calculated into that score, helping recruiters find new employees more quickly and efficiently.

As the pitch contest winner, EdRepublic won tickets to the upcoming GeekWire Ping Pong and Anniversary Bash in March, as well as a coveted spot in the Demo Pit area of the Launch Festival in San Francisco, also taking place in March.

Here’s a rundown of the other pitch contest finalists that were picked from our Demo Zone companies at Startup Day, with descriptions from each startup.

Bloom

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Bloom is a mobile-first advice, care, information sharing and local goods trading network for women planning pregnancy, expectant mothers and new moms. Getting pregnant, being pregnant and being a new mom is an all consuming experience for women. It is a time when there is a strong desire and need to network/interact with other similar women. Bloom’s mission build an active community that is both fun and supportive.

SERPs

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SERPs: Large scale enterprise SEO platform. Run SEO experiments to test and prove your SEO work at any scale.

Surefield

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Surefield is the new way to sell your home: 25 percent of the cost, 100 percent of the service. 3D home tours automate showings, you save big on commissions.

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