Wine 2.0 Competition Totals

Well, the voting for the Wine 2.0 Competition over at Vator.tv is closed and they're slated to announce the "winner" next week selected from the top 3 finalists in a number of metrics.

I have to admit, the contest itself got me pretty competitive, and it was amazing to watch Crushpad's last 48 hour run on the votes. They managed to go from 5 votes, to over 200 in those last two days. Congratulations Crushpad:)

Then again, if Vino Veritas was already a $15m/year company with very happy customers, you bet we'd be reaching out to our fan base for support too. But out of the other four early-stage companies in the competition, we're very happy to have come out where we did (thanks to Yokum Taku, for the heads up to this competition back in August!)

Below is a breakdown of the final top 5 metrics:

We're also really pleased to have placed as the highest rated pitch of the competition and moreover to have had such positive response on the comments and questions we've received from participating in the competition. Everyone's input has contributed greatly to helping us further understand our market, and how to better communicate our own goals and visions for the company.

To the Vator.tv folks, thank you for creating this site for entrepreneurs to try things like this, more than just a platform for competitions, it's been a great way to raise visibility and do early market testing for our startup.

To everyone who voted, rated, commented & referred, a huge THANK YOU for your support and encouragement - it's much appreciated.

Whatever shakes out from the "top three" selection by Chris Moore, we're happy to have had the opportunity to participate in the competition!

(Oh, and just so we can keep up the competitive spirit, we went ahead and placed our pitch in the AO100 competition at Vator too! Why not?).

Wine 2.0 Competition Update

Lots of thanks to all the folks who've supported what we're working on by checking out our video pitch over at Vator, Vino Veritas is now the highest rated pitch in the Wine 2.0 competition!

There's still a few weeks to go in the competition, so we'll see how the rest of the contest shakes out, but our closest rated competitor has been up a lot longer than we have and they have triple the views, but the same number of ratings. So on a vote-to-view ratio, we're kicking butt!

I want to take a minute to comment on some of the pitches over there and my favorites (besides our own, of course) because there are some great companies on there.

Crushpad's business is awesome and will only keep growing (their micro-competitor from ProVina's "Winepod", was recently capitalized by VantagePoint to the tune of $4m, as represented by WSGR - coincidentally, our legal counsel as well) - and with the booming custom-crush and small run vintage business, these micro-labels will be products that will dovetail very nicely with our premium cellaring services.

Just like a lot of the smaller run wineries, as these micro-labels start to get traction as great wines, there will be more and more wine enthusiasts who line up for these wines to pick them up at the moment they are released, and they're going to need to cellar those vintages so that they get the proper aging.

And hey, that's just what we'll be able to help out with!

I hope that maybe even some of our storage clients will make and release some of their small-run vintages exclusively to Vino Veritas members:)

The other great business that just popped up a few days ago with a pitch is WineCommune. Their auction site is an awesome place to find great wines and their growth the past few years has been phenomenal. Larry, our co-founder, has added substantially to his collection through their auctions (shhhh, don't tell his wife:).

They've also been around since 1999 and are a growth company as well.

These two companies are in very different places in the playing field of the current competition since the rest are all pretty much startups or not yet profitable.

There's also a number of social networks based around wines, which is cool, but personally I think social networks are over-hyped these days and there are only so many accounts and profiles we can all keep track of. I'd rather make sure our software has conduits for synching with other online databases, and then some FaceBook and MySpace widgets for showcasing wine collections, but unless our users tell us otherwise, I don't think we need to build yet-another-social-networking-application.

(Do any of you remember Friendster & Tribe? I think social networks are a bit transitory by nature...)

We're looking forward these last few weeks of the contest to see how it shapes up, so for those of you who haven't yet gone to view and vote, we'd love your support as well!