Blog Spot May18 – ILC18
SmartGurlz wins the Startup Pitch Contest at the 2018 Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference
The Startup Pitch Contest was held as part of the IEEE WIE-ILC conference on May 22 this year. Around 12 teams involving various entrepreneurs gave a pitch on their mission toward helping women grow in the technology space. The winning team was offered free 3-month co-working space at Digital Garage.
The winning team of the contest is…………………SmartGurlz !!!!
Hear from Sharmi Albrechtsen from SmartGurlz, on her experience at the ILC’18 and what motivates her company helping young girls to choose a career in STEM.
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 Sharmi Albrechtsen, SmartGurlz, receives the 1st prize from the 2018 ILC Pitch organizer
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 Judging the Startup Pitch contest |
Winning the IEEE WIE Best Startup Award has been one of the highlights of my career, next to appearing on Shark Tank and teaching Richard Branson to code!
Designed to encourage young girl’s interests in STEM subjects, SmartGurlz is a unique software and hardware platform that connects verbal-emotive thinking with coding robots. Our mission is to be the leader in STEM-related products tailored to young girls ages 5-12. Our vision is to increase the number of young girls who choose STEM-related education and careers.
At the WIE conference, I truly felt that the members energy and passion about our mission filled the room as I spoke and this is why I am reaching out now to the membership to join us! Coming to the WIE conference was like coming ‘home’. Every woman in the room understood the need to bridge the gender gap in STEM.
As you know, less than 3 percent of VC funding is awarded to women. To level the playing field, SmartGurlz is running a crowd equity campaign to raise Seed funding for the company. We would love to have WIE members as a micro investors in SmartGurlz – investments start as low as $1K. We have already raised $360,000 through hundreds of investors. SmartGurlz will also match each raise with a donation of SmartGurlz coding robots class pack to a school in need or choice of the investor.
I’d recommend getting involved now to avoid missing out on the amazing opportunity to support the future of STEM and the young women of the future! We’ve grown tremendously, now with more than 1.2 million in sales, we’re also working with Walmart on a new product line for 2019. We have a new partnership with Girl Scouts in America and I’m thrilled to say we have the amazing Kari from Mythbusters on board as Chief Creative Officer! It’s an exciting time to get involved and own your share of SmartGurlz.
I’m super proud and passionate about this product (and I absolutely love talking about it!), so if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Support us now, and check out our Seed Invest page. We need and count on your support!