Borrow for Your Bump, an Omaha-based startup that provides high-end maternity clothes to expecting mothers, won $10,000 last night at the 3rd annual Get Started Omaha event.
Hundreds gathered at the sold out event at the Holland Performing Arts Center to watch five businesses pitch their best ideas to a panel of five judges.
The pitches were judged on three criteria: originality, ease of implementation and social benefit. Notably, the panel included: Stephen Rowley, Senior Vice President of Cox Business; Tim Washer, Executive Producer of Rich Media Marketing at Cisco Systems; Sabina Nawaz, Global CEO Coach and Keynote Speaker; James Ledbetter, Editor of Inc. Magazine and Inc.com and Kevin Willer, Partner at Chicago Ventures.
Borrow For Your Bump’s winning pitch beat out four other Omaha startup businesses, including REQ, a software platform designed by Kat Slump that provides restaurants advanced customer insights the moment they walk through the door. There were also 35 other startups that entered the contest.
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Krystal Stubbendeck, co-founder of Borrow for your Bump, plans to use the money to better their customer service.
“Our style boxes are very new and we have a lot we can do on the customer side to make that experience even better,” said Stubbendeck. “Right now it’s kind of a manual process so we want to reduce our return rate by focusing on a seamless automated system to make the customer feel more comfortable using the service.”
Other businesses that pitched their ideas to the panel and audience included: Disposable Dog Bath, Opendorse and Social Justice Education Network.
This year the event was part of the first annual Omaha Startup Week, which Julie Minton, Marketing Manager at Cox Business, said helped make the event such a success this year.
“I think it was our best event in terms of quality of pitches. I think we had a really diverse audience that was super energetic, and I think moving it into Omaha Startup Week was the right move,” said Minton.
To see a full schedule for the week you can visit omahastartupweek.co.
To learn more about Borrow For Your Bump, read our Silicon Prairie News Q & A with Stubbendeck from October.
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Melanie Lucks is a communications intern for Silicon Prairie News and AIM Careerlink.
