by Keith Kappel | Jul 13, 2022 | Bunker Labs, USAA Pitch Contest
The Road to San Antonio drives through Seattle on July 21, 2022, where we’ll hold the fifth of six regional pitch competitions. There, eight companies will compete for $15,000 in regional prize money. Seattle’s winner reserves a spot on stage in San Antonio to compete for the grand prize of $100,000 dollars, continuing USAA’s 100th Anniversary Pitch Competition.
Update: Seattle Winners Announced!
Kris Sandor and Readly won the $10,000 first prize in Seattle for their SaaS AI-powered customer support solution. Bill Bruner and New Frontier Aerospace’s hypersonic international green air carrier was the runner up and scored $5,000 in prize money. While Readly is headed to the Finals in San Antonio, Tx this November, the other competitors still can earn a wild card spot!
The event also featured Zenledger COO Greg Adams and Neff Hudson, Vice President of Corporate Development for USAA, who joined us for our fireside chat. Zenledger helps crypto investors file their taxes with software that connects to over 500 different cryptocurrency and NFT exchanges to make filing easy. Together, they discussed Greg’s journey from Army Special Forces and Afghanistan to Harvard Business School, and how both equipped him to surround himself “builders” to launch, run, and sell his entrepreneurial ventures. There was also some discussion on the recent fall of the Afghani government, and how Greg Adams helped an interpreter his unit used during his time in country flee retaliation for assisting, alongside many others.
Bill Bruner, Air Force CEO, New Frontier Aerospace
New Frontier Aerospace, Inc. was founded in 2020 with the vision of shortening painfully long international flights, ending the era of sprawling airport runways, and eliminating the billion tonnes of greenhouse gases airliners dump into the atmosphere every year with a hypersonic, renewably fueled, vertical landing aircraft that can deliver passengers and urgent cargo anywhere on the planet 10x faster than today’s jets—with net zero greenhouse gas emissions.