Feb 23, 2025 4pm-9pm
Harbor Ballroom @ Bell Harbor Conference Center
2211 Alaskan Wy, Seattle, WA 98121

2025 Seattle Startup Competition

Calling all Seattle startup founders!

The competition is the largest startup contest in the Greater Seattle area for the 2024-2025 season and will additionally include a life sciences and health panel discussion as part of the event. It aims to support early-stage technology startups in the region, with an expected attendance of over 300 participants and more than a hundred competing projects. The event will be promoted across the technology entrepreneur community, tech company professionals, and university students throughout Greater Seattle.

We welcome startup projects from cutting-edge fields including, but not limited to, AI, energy, fintech, healthcare, autonomous driving, gaming, and e-commerce. The top three startups will receive generous cash prizes along with other benefits, such as direct access to a list of venture capital firms, free legal consultations, and cloud services.

Click here to enter the competition. Purchase tickets to attend the medical/life science panel in the afternoon and watch the final competition.

For questions, please contact Pitch2025@seattlestartup.org

Sponsor the Event

Host

Partners

Timeline

Feb 10

Submit Application Form

Apply here

Application Confirmation - Within two weeks of your submission date, an assistant will contact you to confirm your application and complete any missing information.

Mentorship Assignment - Within four weeks of your submission date, if you request mentorship, a mentor will be assigned to you.

Feb 15

Submit Pitch Deck Drafts

Feb 17

Finalist Announcement

notifying projects selected for the final pitch event

Feb 17-20

Mentoring

We will schedule a 1:1 session with each finalist to discuss contest details

Feb 21

Submit Final Pitch Deck and MVP

Feb 23

Final Pitch Event

4pm - Checkin and Networking

4:30pm to 5pm - AI in life science and healthcare panel discussion with founders and funders.

5pm to 6pm - Social networking time

6pm to 8:30 pm - Keynote speech, final pitch of the startups, announcing winners

Keynote Speakers

Joy Tang

Founder of Markable.AI

JC Mao

General Partner @ Fellows Fund;
Ex-Google/Microsoft VP

Panelists

Hetu Kamisetty

Hetu Kamisetty is a co-founder and CTO of Xaira and has played a pivotal role in scaling the firm since its inception in 2023. He has nearly two decades of experience in AI and ML. Prior to Xaira, he spent a decade at Meta, where he played a leading role in several AI-related initiatives, including early efforts in Generative AI. Before that, Hetu was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. David Baker's laboratory at the University of Washington, where he pioneered the use of self-supervised generative models of protein families in protein folding and design. Kamisetty holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University, where his thesis focused on Probabilistic Models of Proteins, and a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras. At Xaira, Hetu and his team are focused on developing state-of-the-art AI models for drug discovery to address unmet clinical needs.

Maren Nelson

Angel Investor, Alliance of Angels Life Sciences Screening Committee Co-chair

Eric Larsen

An experienced entrepreneur, Larsen works with emerging Northwest companies seeking to scale by leveraging his broad experience in engineering, technology, finance, and business operations. He advises several companies and has led multiple fund raising rounds.

Shen Ren, representing Prof. Professor Dayong Gao

Ren earned his doctorate from UW ME in December 2020 and also won the department’s Exceptional Ph.D. Dissertation Award for his research. As a postdoctoral fellow he is continuing his work with ME’s Origincell Endowed Professor Dayong Gao, developing advanced technology for artificial organs and organ cryopreservation.

Judges

Special Guest: Mr. Lu

Mr. Lu is currently an investor and adviser for a leading VC in Silicon Valley as well as consultant for a series of start ups in U.S. and Asia. He was VP of Alipay / Ant Group in charge of trust & safety and fraud management from 2014-2018. Prior to that, he was Sr Director at PayPal looking after its global risk management platform. He also worked at UBS investment bank and TIBCO in executive roles for 10+ years.

Mr. Lu has a MS degree in Computer Science from DePaul University as well as BSCS from Beijing University of Science and Technology

Bob Crimmins

General Partner, Startup Haven Ventures

Bay Raitt

CEO and founder of The Spiraloid Workshop Company, 3D Graphic Novelist, Animator.