In my opinion, these were the best questions the panel of venture capitalists asked. Here is our CEO’s account of how Matchist won.

I’d argue the primary reason we won is the team. The competition was fierce and intimidatingly impressive. We did NOT have:

• Biggest market opportunity
• Smartest team
• Most domain expertise
• Funniest pitch
• Prettiest slides

The reason we won is simple. Our CEO put together the best team:

• Prior startup experience (acquisition by Groupon)
• Prior experience running a business together (Entrepreneurs Unpluggd)
• Prior relationships (Three judges were investors in my last startup, for example.)
• Prior experience winning business plan competitions
• Prior experience judging business plan competitions
• Range of talent (e.g. LinkedIn, Amazon, family hotel business, & a fortune 500 web developer)
• Partnerships with the hottest tech companies on the market in under 10 weeks
• Amazing advisory Board (Matt Moog & Troy Henikoff)
• Most importantly, we enjoyed working together and it showed

Again, we didn’t have the prettiest slides. We didn’t have the biggest market opportunity  We didn’t have the smoothest pitch. We did have an all-star team (in business school terms). We did work our butts off. We did leverage our experience, relationships and expertise to make the most of the feedback and resources the New Venture Challenge class offered.

Most importantly, we couldn’t have done that without each and every person on our team. Thank you Stella for recruiting and leading that team.