We Won Venture Capital Pitch Contest!

The venture capital pitch competition was held last Thursday night at Pace University’s Business School in NYC. What a fun event! I started the pitch about something that most people like, fast cars and computers. I used Knight Rider as a theme for the pitch. I then briefly outlined the technical capabilities about what it can do now and what it will do with some VC money when the prototype is built-out. Slides with more technical info. were shown behind me as I described how the team did it and what we’d like to do with it in the future. During the Q&A, I addressed how much money we’re looking for ($30K just to build-out the prototype).

The majority of the judges were VCs and one like it. I met with him the following evening along with the President of a car computer company that has related, but not similar, products. They liked the idea and said the market is huge, but didn’t like the reverse engineering and brute forcing the protocols that we’ve done. Although that has been a valid and legal business model in the past (Compaq did it to IBM), the VCs want it done with licenses and defensive patenting. We might be able to do it like that as long as we don’t lose the open source/free software platform. We’re talking.

Finalist for Pace University Venture Capital Pitch Contest

We made it! OpenOtto is a finalist in a competition for venture capital financing of a new product. I'm off to NYC for the Thursday night presentation. I've been busy working on the presentation, but here is the winning pitch that got OpenOtto into the finals:

"You don’t have to be David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider to have your car talk to you. OpenOtto is a platform for developing vehicle aware products for the consumer and industrial markets. While it will not ask you how you’re doing this evening, most people don’t realize how much information your car’s computer can tell you. OpenOtto consists of a hardware interface to your car's OBD II connector as well as an extensible software platform for communicating with all networked electronic devices in the car. Designed for flexibility and scalability, it is easily expandable to future vehicle capabilities.

OpenOtto consists of two products targeted to different markets. The first is a car computer that acts as an interface between your car's computer and a 4" x 8" touch screen display that attaches to your dashboard. The interface shows easy to understand graphical output from your car's computer including, but not limited to, standard OBD II output: coolant temperature, engine speed, oxygen sensor readings, and emission related trouble codes. Advanced features include outputting suspension control, anti-lock/traction control, and air bag status.

Additional safety and security features include a remote start and kill feature for anti-theft or convenience, display warnings to users when the transmission begins to fail, individual wheel speed indicating wheel slippage, and real-time engine performance monitoring.

The second product is priced lower for the general consumer. It includes the ability to attach any cell phone with GPS to OpenOtto. Once attached, the car's computer will text message someone (e.g., a parent) if the car exceeds a certain speed and GPS coordinates will be texted, and call 911 if airbags deploy (no proprietary subscription necessary).

Safety and security is important and built into the computer engineering designs. Some features will be access controlled and transmission of all sensitive data transmitted by OpenOtto will be encrypted using industry standard best practices to ensure safety, security, and privacy of the user.

The software and hardware designs will be released as free and open source designs to encourage adoption and adaptation of the features.

For consumers, a complete dashboard mounted display with computer will cost between $300-$500.00. The closest product currently on the market costs between $1000.-$5000.000 and does not include open software and hardware platforms, graphical dash board mounted displays, or customizable features. The low cost consumer device will target a retail cost of $100-$200.

Try getting KITT for that price."