A Portland-based company building efficient battery technology took home a $135,000 first place prize at the Seattle Angel Conference on Wednesday.
Energy Storage Systems, a three-year-old startup, won the investment after pitching at the conference and beat out five other finalists. The 10-person company helps its customers reduce electricity costs and minimize the impact of power outages by using an iron electrolyte with a patented flow cell design.
CEO Craig Evans said that the investment, which comes from a group of local angels, will be part of his company’s Series A round.
“Closing the Series A means we will be able to hire the proper manufacturing people for our organization, purchase some tooling, purchase working capital and move into a new building were we can manufacture and test our product,” Evans said.
Here were the other finalists, with descriptions from each company:
PotaVida — Seattle (audience favorite): A household-level solution for BOP and disasters that logs usage, helping aid organizations save more lives for less money.
NorthAmerica Talk — Olympia: NorthAmerica Talk is disrupting the media industry. Our four businesses reach 200,000-plus unique uesrs weekly. Our unique data guides marketers.
The Hub EDU — Redmond: The HubEDU is your digital library for education and life. Why? Because you can’t learn everything you need to know about something in just one place.
THIRD & Loom — Seattle: Third & Loom is a vertically integrated designer label that democratizes haute couture by letting clients become fashion designers.
Connect2 Classes — Seattle: We believe that Connect2classes will do for continuing education what TripAdvisor did for air travel, Angie’s List did for trades and Yelp for business reviews.
The Seattle Angel Conference, which launched three years ago, has now awarded nearly $1 million to winning companies with more than 110 angel investors participating.
“Our goal with the Seattle Angel Conference is to grow more active angels in the region and with that work, to create more successful startups,” said John Sechrest, founder of the Seattle Angel Conference.
The next Seattle Angel Conference will be held in May 2015, with applications due on Feb. 24.
