Springfield app developer Pressed won $9,000 in cash and prizes in the May 8 Pitch Pit competition at the second annual Springfield Innovation Summit, aka Spin 66.
The two-day conference at the Robert W. Plaster Center for Free Enterprise & Business Development drew roughly 150 attendees, about the same as last year, according to event organizers with Mercy Research and Development.
Pressed creator Damian Palmer designed the app as an “intelligent personal assistant.”
“At the end of the day, time is the one resource that we can never get back,” Palmer said during his pitch in front of roughly 100 people. “We want to take all of the time out of time management.”
The Pressed software brings users’ calendars and to-do lists into a single place to manage, he said. Selected by a panel of four judges, Pressed was awarded $3,000 in cash from the Missouri State University College of Business, $2,000 in legal services from law firm Polsinelli PC, $2,000 in accounting and tax services from Abacus CPAs LLC and $2,000 in project-management services from RefineM LLC.
Other Pitch Pit presenters were:
- The Daily Scholar, a platform for citizen journalism, op-eds and debates online;
- Photo Share Club, a mail-order service promoting local artists and photographers;
- The Sunday Morning Drive, a two-hour weekly Christian-music program aired on 137 radio stations; and
- Distillery 66, a microdistillery to produce whiskey, rum and absinthe.
Pressed currently is in beta testing, and Palmer said the business model draws revenue from an affiliate marketing program. He said the company has an email list of more than 250 people interested in the product.
Palmer compared the one-stop, time-management system to the iPhone.
“When the iPhone first came out, it had all of these different features, but it combined them in a way that people never thought of, and in a way they never realized they needed. I feel that’s what Pressed is,” Palmer said, noting the Pressed software includes a habit-tracking tool, so users can receive personalized reminders, for example, about regular workouts.
Last year, the Pitch Pit competition went to Make People Better LLC and majority owner Kerri Miller. The pitch introduced her to investors for her Re:iimmune clinical-strength hydrating product, and she said it’s been a whirlwind since.
Miller has signed a contract with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and began developing new products and negotiations to hit Target Corp.’s shelves. “We are on shelves in 174 Wal-Mart locations in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. We should be on shelves locally in a couple of weeks,” she said by email.
Session twistThe Ignite series was a new twist to Spin 66 this year, designed to quickly break down a topic with visual aids.
Covering three topics – technology, medical and creative – Ignite speakers addressed 20 slides automatically timed to change every 15 seconds within their 5-minute presentations.
Ignite presenters included Todd Christell of SpringNet Broadband, Jody Chaffin of The App Pros and Shawn Matthews of Swagbot Creative.
Keynote presentations were from Diana Kander, a senior fellow of Kansas City-based Kauffman Foundation, and Jeff Amerine, director of the University of Arkansas Technology Ventures team and founding principal of Startup Junkie Consulting.
SpinMedAnother health component of the summit was the SpinMed workshop, in which Mercy’s Dr. Tom Hale talked about the health system’s $50 million Virtual Care Center – a one-of-its kind physical hub to deliver e-medicine – that is slated to be open in July.
“We have a culture in medicine that has to change or it will collapse under its own weight,” said Hale, executive medical director of Mercy’s telehealth services, pointing to the estimated $3.8 trillion Americans spend each year on health care.
To address demand for care and rising expenses, Hale said telehealth services can provide access to quality care for rural patients, in particular, while helping to reduce provider costs. “We have an access to care problem,” Hale said. “Technology can extend physical spaces.”
