Screen shot
Hailey Lister of Alivo delivers her winning pitch at Tuesday's event.
Updated: October 25, 2024
AI startup wins $50K prize in Gorham Savings Bank's LaunchPad pitch-off
Photo / Tim Greenway
Gorham Savings Bank President and CEO Steve deCastro, fourth from left, is joined on stage by emcee Katie Grant (a commercial banker at Gorham Savings) and the LaunchPad contest judges and finalists on stage before announcing the winner.
Artificial intelligence took center stage at Gorham Savings Bank's LaunchPad small business pitch-off this week, with Portland-based tech startup Alivo taking home the $50,000 prize.
Alivo is an AI-powered sales assistant for home service providers. Competing against four other finalists, Alivo co-founder Hailey Lister wowed judges with her pitch on Alivo’s innovative tool for generating sales leads.
The other finalists were Bijou Build, Diggables, Kinotek and NKENNE. All presented their pitches in Tuesday's live event at the University of New England's Innovation Hall in Portland, which was also live-streamed on YouTube.
With its AI-powered platform, Alivo can answer phone calls, respond to leads instantly, book appointments, and send automated follow-ups. (AI also generated the name of the company, a play on the word "alive.")
The goal is to streamline customer interactions and improve service delivery, ultimately helping businesses grow and retain clients.
“Winning this grant is a game-changer as we scale Alivo to meet the surging demand," Lister said in a statement released after the contest. “We’re working on raising our first funding round, and the exposure from LaunchPad could be the final push we need to reach our goal.”
She told Mainebiz the company plans to use prize money for hiring.
“We have three folks on the team right now, and we are looking to use the prize money to create two more full-time positions in Maine — a customer success representative and a developer — to meet growing customer demand,” she said.
Plans to raise additional financing are also in the works.
“We started the company a little over a year ago and have bootstrapped our way to over $100,000 annual recurring revenue,” Lister said. “Now we are working on closing our first funding round.”
Emerging Business Award
Gorham Savings Bank also honored a local entrepreneur in the Emerging Business Award category.
From a group of an additional five finalists selected from LaunchPad applicants, Norridgewock-based Maine Laboratories earned the honor, along with a $10,000 cash grant from Gorham Savings Bank and $10,000 of in-kind marketing, business development and public relations services from a handful of providers.
Maine Laboratories is the state's first commercial lab focused on PFAS testing. The other finalists, who submitted pre-recorded video pitches, were Graze, Survue, Tootie’s Tempeh and Viable Gear.
Jay and Jennifer Yilmaz, owners of the Applewood Inn in Freeport, contributed an additional $1,000 to the Emerging Business Award, raising the total cash prize to $11,000.
"The quality of the pitches this year was truly outstanding, and it was a privilege to witness,” said Steve deCastro, president and CEO of Gorham Savings Bank. “Seeing the innovative spirit continue to thrive in Maine is incredibly encouraging, and I have no doubt that all the finalists will experience continued success.”
This year’s contest judges were John Burns, former head of the Maine Venture Fund; Katie Fullam Harris, MaineHealth's chief government affairs officer; and Kristine Delano, a strategic business advisor and host of the WE Talk Careers podcast.
Replay
A replay of the 2024 Gorham Savings Bank LaunchPad event is available here.
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Anonymous
October 27, 2024
How does one know whether software is truly AI? It's easy to preprogram responses within an app to make it look like AI. We did that back in the 80's. The original version of Adventure was made that way. We even had fortune teller software that predicted your future based on a series of questions. But the answers were all pre-coded. Nothing intelligent about it. Looks like another one bites the dust.
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