The Social Matchbox Startup Launch Event is an annual event held by East Coast Startup Founders, Investors, and Community Leaders to provide a launch platform for new web and software product startups to gain exposure to early adopters, major media, bloggers, investors--as well as to compete for a chance to win the Community Choice and Founders' Choice Awards from their peers.  The Startup... [read more]

The Social Matchbox Startup Launch Event is an annual event held by East Coast Startup Founders, Investors, and Community Leaders to provide a launch platform for new web and software product startups to gain exposure to early adopters, major media, bloggers, investors--as well as to compete for a chance to win the Community Choice and Founders' Choice Awards from their peers.  The Startup companies that have launched at the event have met investors, attracted new team members, garnered attention from major media, and forged partnerships.   We select web and software product startups from a competitive pool of nominees that is largely from the Mid-Atlantic region.  Last year 65 companies were nominated, but the Social Matchbox team only selected the Top Ten.  This year competition is expected to be tougher than ever with nominations already submitted from the Washington, D.C. area as well as Manhattan and Palo Alto.  Once selected, presenters have a chance to practice their pitch presentations with the Social Matchbox team before the event where founders must convince a room of Social Matchbox alumni, investors, executives and industry experts to invest their Social MatchBUCKS into their company.  The startup presenter with the most Social MatchBUCK investment receive the coveted “Community Choice” award.  Another presenter is selected by the Social Matchbox alumni of previous startup presenters to receive the “Founders' Choice” from their peers.  Due to their continued partnership with the startup community, our generous Anchor Sponsors, Pillsbury LLC,   Grotech Ventures,  and staffmagnet, LLC, have provided essential support to make the event bigger and better this year, as well as to offer attendeeds an open bar and complimentary food prior to presentations and during intermission.      Sponsors are the only service providers allowed into Social Matchbox. The Social Matchbox team carefully curates the attendee list to create a community of executives, investors, startup employees and those building startups.  The result is an audience of industry experts from a variety of fields, including Design & User Experience, Ecommerce, Mobile (e.g. Android, iPhone), Online Marketing, Natural Language Processing, Product Management, Search, Social Networking, Government Transparency, Software Engineering, and Web 2.0.        SCHEDULE & VENUE US Navy Memorial Heritage Center701 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004Note: The PMI Parking Garage located at 875 D Street NW (Bldg. #400), 202-785-9191 x450 stays open until midnight - so you may want to consider parking there if you are driving in.  The garage in the Navy Memorial building closes at 9pm. The Navy Memorial Metro stop is in the same building complex as the event venue.  The location is a few blocks from the Gallery Place Metro stop on the red line as well.  If you are coming in from out of town this location is just a few blocks from the White House and other major DC destinations.  THU., APRIL 29, 2010  6:00