The 2015 edition of Twitter Hatch proved to be both exciting and challenging for the participants. Having been picked from over 600 startups at more than 30 countries, the contestants presented their projects in front of a crowd of +200, with a dynamic pitching format of 2 minutes and no slides or demos.
After deliberating, the judging panel, made up of Wayne Chang, Jana Messerschmidt, and Prashant Sridharan, returned to announce the winners.
Taking third place was Haystack, a personalized video news channel you can watch on mobile and desktop.
The runner-up was London-based City Falcon, a crowd-sourced, crowd-curated, real-time financial news platform based on Twitter feeds.
First place and grand prize winner was the San Francisco-based team of Mexican founders running Bridgefy, the mobile messaging app that works without Internet or SMS that is blowing up in South America and the Middle East. The Bridgefy technology, said the founders, is being developed into an SDK that will be adaptable by existing platforms such as Uber, Facebook Chat, Whatsapp, Snapchat, etc. so people can keep using these apps even when they don’t have access to Internet. Taking first place had the founders jumping with joy after hearing their startup be named winner of the international pitching contest.
The Bridgefy team’s prizes included $25,000, personal mentorship from the judges and from Twitter execs, and Twitter ad credits. The team is currently based in San Francisco and is seeking to close its seed round to continue working on connecting the unconnected.
Silicon Valle MX 