Grand Prize Winner MeowSkratch wins $10,000! $50,000+ in Cash & Prizes Awarded to New Santa Fe Businesses!
BizMIX is a business plan competition that is paced over a five-month period in which entrepreneurs apply to bizMIX, get accepted, meet business mentors for special mentor nights, writing a 5-page business plan, culminating in a final pitch contest in front of a panel of business experts who judge the presentations and award $50,000+ in cash and prizes. This year, our judges chose MeowSkratch as our Grand Prize winner awarding them $10,000. MeowSkratch is a patented, user-friendly wonder of a sculpting medium that is non-toxic, dries quickly, does not shrink, sands easily, adheres to most surfaces, adheres to itself, can be drilled into and has structural integrity after drying, while being affordable to artists, builders and craftspeople.
We had a 1st Place tie, awarding $5,000 to Shihan Fine Knives – Blacksmithing shop committed to making high-quality, hand-forged Japanese style kitchen cutlery by combining rigorous metallurgical processing with the streamlined production methods of Japanese artisans, and The Kitchen, a community focused commercial kitchen and food business (food truck, restaurant, pop-up) incubator providing full service kitchen facilities with multiple stations and a dining/classroom area.
The 7 incredible businesses who wowed everyone all with their pitches and plans: Cafe Roha, Squash Blossom, HoneyMoon Brewery, Flying Dutchess,BeneTrkr, Enchanted Barrel, and Parlour. They were awarded over $30,000 in in-kind prizes! And those who made it through the competition: Up & Down Productions, Kittyloo, Pedal Speed Bags, Comet Tiny House.
A huge thank you to our incredible sponsors!: LANL Feynman Center for Innovation, Thornburg Investment, Christus St. Vincent, PNM, City of Santa Fe, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, New Mexico Bank and Trust, Santa Fe Community Foundation, Positive Energy Solar, Century Bank, Los Alamos National Bank, Santa Fe County, and Bank of Albuquerque.
…and, our in-kind sponsors!: 4-LEET, Slazer Technologies, Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, The Bennett Firm, Hutton Broadcasting, Barraclough and Associates, P.C., the Santa Fe Business Incubator, The Hire Firm, Advance Tax Services, Santa Fe Green Chamber, and the NM Angels.
bizMIX is in its fourth year, and in 2015, we filtered through 86 initial applicants, yielding 15 original finalists, resulting in 10 incredible teams making it through the final pitch contest, taking place last night, August 13th. Winners of last night’s pitch contest, in conjunction with written their business plans, have been judged upon their work and will be awarded final prizes on August 20th.
bizMIX is a special program of MIX Santa Fe, an alternative professional networking geared toward talent retention and attraction of our amazing. Recently, MIX won a ‘Bright Ideas’ award from Harvard for the innovation we create within government to drive talent retention and development.