Although many attendees on Twitter and some in the crowd had complaints about this year’s TechCrunch Boston Meetup + Pitch-off at the Estate, the event ran much more smoothly and was far more entertaining than it was last year.
The 10 startups selected for the event had to overcome some of the crowd noise to give a one-minute pitch to a group of judges that included TechCrunch’s East Coast editor John Biggs, TechCrunch’s Jon Shieber, Atlas Venture partner Jeff Fagnan, Nitesh Banta of General Catalyst and Rough Draft Venture, and Neil Chheda from Romulus Capital. After deliberating for a bit, the judges selected fashion startup Clique Chic as this year’s Pitch-off winner.

New York City-based Clique Chic will now get the chance to pitch at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt NYC in May. The winner of the startup contest at this year’s East Coast TechCrunch conference in New York City is awarded $50,000 and the hotly-contested Disrupt Cup.

While Clique Chic, a members-only women’s designer fashion site, is a cool idea and was deserving of the victory, it may have benefited from being a more easy-to-understand consumer product compared to the other startups it was competing against. Some of the other startups have MIT and Harvard roots and are a bit more technologically advanced, including Orig3n, which is trying to take blood samples and turn them into cells that can be used for research, and Dynometrics, which has created an optical lactate meter to help endurance athletes better know their exercise threshold.

For some, the event did not live up to expectations. Many complaints focused on the long line to get into The Estate and the frigid conditions outside, as well as the inability to hear many of the speakers over the packed house of eager networkers and technology enthusiasts. However, compared to last year’s TechCrunch Meetup, which took place at the much larger Royale and featured a seemingly smaller crowd as well as a bit of a combative Jordan Crook, this year’s event seemed better organized and had a much more positive vibe.

A lot of credit should be given to TechCrunch’s Crook, the host of both last year’s and this year’s events. While her anger at the noise and her unusual banter with the crowd made the 2014 meetup audience a bit uncomfortable, Crook did a great job in a possibly worse situation this year. The Estate was not only full, but it also had startup companies, many of whom were looking to hire or get the word out about their products, at booths throughout the lower level and balcony. Not only did the booths make it difficult to maneuver through the event, they also added a ton of noise. Crook handled the distraction much more gracefully this year, putting a focus on the nervous company representative pitching to hundreds of people for the first time.
The highlight of the entire evening was the pitch from a New York City-based company called Lettuce: Eat and Play that was described as “Tinder, but more like Yelp,” by its, co-founder Andre Borczuk. What Lettuce: Eat and Play actually does is offer users the ability to swipe right or left, like dating app Tinder, to choose the types of food and restaurants they like. The app builds a profile of favorites and then can recommend similar restaurants if a user is searching for one. Borczuk’s pitch was by far the most memorable, mainly because he rapped about his company during his allotted minute. You can watch his performance below (h/t to Waylens, Inc.):

From: betaboston.com