AUSTIN, TEXAS USA (June 11, 2015) — Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) is finalizing plans for its latest installment of the 20X series: Entrepreneur 20X (E20X). The E20X pitching competition and kiosk pavilion will be featured at the 2015 Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®), June 15–18 in Austin, Texas USA. Produced in partnership with Capital Factory, E20X will gather innovative start-ups to pitch cutting-edge, transformative hospitality technology to an audience of venture capitalists, angel investors, serial entrepreneurs and HITEC attendees on Monday, June 15 at 1:00 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center. In the action-packed E20X session, open to registered full-conference HITEC attendees, entrepreneurs will pitch for three minutes, followed by two minutes of Q&A from an expert panel of judges. The winning start-up will receive a cash prize and a coveted HITEC Tech Talk speaking opportunity.
In addition, Participants will be showcased all week in the E20X kiosk pavilion located at the end of aisles 1 and 2 in the HITEC exhibit hall June 16-18. In the pavilion, attendees will have the opportunity to come face-to-face with these innovative, disruptive technologies. Monday’s pitching companies will be joined by other start-ups that competed at the Travel and Technology (TNT) event hosted by Hospitality Upgrade and managed by Somers Communications in March.
E20X Pitching and Pavilion Companies
- Capton, Inc. * (Winner of TNT pitching competition)
- ClearBlade
- HotelRSV
- Loop & Tie
- Spokefly
- TableGrabber
- TripChamp
- Triptease
- Whistle
Additional E20X Pavilion Companies (TNT Competitors)
E20X judges include:
Scot Campbell, CHTP. Campbell is currently vice president at Caesars Entertainment. He was responsible for opening MGM’s CityCenter in Las Vegas, an $8.5 billion dollar multi-brand resort, the largest domestic opening of its kind. His most recent work project was the WiFi Structure, more than 47,000 hot spots for Caesars Entertainment. He is one of the 2015 inductees into the HFTP Hospitality Technology Hall of Fame.
Don Craven. Craven was raised in Austin where he has been an entrepreneur for over 25 years. He bootstrapped his first information service company, Flood Data Services, out of his college apartment. His company was sold to First American Financial, where as VP of Product Development, he helped grow the REIS unit both organically and through acquisition, into a $2 billion enterprise which was spun off in 2010 as CoreLogic. He was a key developer of the 4th Street district in downtown Austin, where he co-founded The Austin Film Center and also founded and later sold the Speakeasy nightclub. He is the Director of the Craven Family Foundation which supports local causes and charities.
Morgan Flager. Flager has been a Partner with Silverton since 2006. Prior to joining Silverton, he worked with FTV Capital in San Francisco, where he focused on growth investments in technology and financial services. Flager sits on the boards of 360pi, Alert Media, Outbound Engine, Pivot Freight, TrendKite, The Zebra, UnboundID and is actively involved with Favor, Sparefoot, TurnKey Vacation Rentals and WPEngine. He led Silverton’s investments in BlackLocus (acquired by Home Depot), Hyper9 (acquired by Solarwinds) and Crimson Services (acquired by Advisory Board Company).
Prakash Shukla. Shukla is currently a partner with HGM Funds, a 2.5B private equity fund, and is on the HFTP Global Board of Directors. Shukla brings over 25 years of experience in investment and general management and has an entrepreneurial background in building and managing multifaceted businesses. Shukla was a 2013 Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard Business School. He has worked at the Tata group in India, where he was the CIO of Taj Hotels and also responsible for IT for the organization.
Krishna Srinivasan. Srinivasan is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early stage Texas-based companies and entrepreneurs since 2000. His current board involvements include CS Disco (e-discovery platform), Razberi Technologies (security appliance), Stack Engine (Docker / container management), StepOne (predictive self-support), and Written (content marketing platform). Krishna also currently serves as Chairman of the Miracle Foundation board, an Austin-based organization that supports orphanages in India and is one of the founding members and previously served as a board member of TiE Austin.
Edward St. Onge. St. Onge is currently president of Flip.To. At age 22, St. Onge launched a SaaS product that was the first of its kind for the hospitality world. Ten years later, EZYield was acquired by one of the largest travel software companies in the world, TravelClick. He’s an angel investor, board director, amateur racetrack driver and semi-professional father of two.
For more information on E20X, visit the event web page or e-mail Charlotte Somers at [email protected].
