Plink!, the Burlington and Richmond bubbly beverage tablet startup, won the LaunchVT Demo Night competition at Hula, the Burlington incubator space, on Tuesday night.
Every year, LaunchVT, the startup accelerator sponsored by the Lake Champlain Chamber, assembles a group of business founders for 12 weeks of mentoring. The program culminates in Demo Night, in which founders compete for the best presentation with seven-minute pitches and answer questions from the judges.
This year’s cohort included eight startups. For the first time, most of them were not from Chittenden County, though Tuesday night’s winners were.
“We are building a radically sustainable global beverage brand,” Plink! co-founder Luke Montgomery-Smith said. “Think of us as the Ben & Jerry’s of hydration.”
Montgomery-Smith and co-founder Max Luthy, both British immigrants, touted their tablets as a way to eliminate waste from plastic beverage bottles and to save fuel costs from shipping canned and bottled flavored waters. The tablets can be dropped in a glass of water from the tap or into a reusable water bottle.
The three judges awarded Montgomery-Smith and Luthy the grand prize — the Lake Champlain Chamber Award. The winners were handed a large copy of the $15,000 check.
“The founders had a very viable, scalable business,” said judge Geoff Strawbridge, founder of BootStrapVT, a Burlington digital marketing agency. “They had kind of already created this new category of drink.”
Plink! has been sold in stores around Vermont since January. The tablets are available at City Market, Healthy Living, Outdoor Gear Exchange, Ski Rack and about 50 other stores around the state, Montgomery-Smith said.
“They certainly have identified a market trend,” said judge Michael Metz, an entrepreneur specializing in rare-earth materials for photonics and high-tech applications. “It’s real.”
“They stood out as two very savvy entrepreneurs who knew the marketplace and had done their homework and had already launched their product,” said judge Janice St. Onge, president of Montpelier-based Flexible Capital Fund.
The startups are in different stages. Luthy said he and Montgomery-Smith have been fundraising for some time and had investors in the audience, as well as people they were hoping to persuade to invest.
“Hopefully, we can go bang that check on the hood of their cars as they’re trying to leave tonight and say: ‘Come on!’” said Luthy, who said other people came up to them, encouraging them to stock the tablets in a particular store or volunteering to do some marketing at The University of Vermont.
“Beyond the investors, it’s kind of social capital,” Luthy said.
“Cementing our community, really,” added Montgomery-Smith, pointing to supporters of Vermont Green Football Club, which Plink! sponsors, in the audience.
More than 300 people attended the presentations.
Josh Costa, founder of Sleep Well Recycling, a Burlington mattress recycling company, won the Audience Choice award and a $5,000 check with his presentation, in which he dragged a mattress onto the stage while singing.
The company already recycles 95% of thrown-away mattresses in Chittenden County, Costa said.
He said the 12 weeks of mentorship put needed pressure on him to step back from day-to-day operations.
“All of the engagements we had through LaunchVT forced me out of the warehouse to do business stuff, which I hadn’t done much of,” he said. By delegating, he came to realize that he could really grow the business, he said.
Asked whether he ran into potential investors at Demo Night, Costa said a few “are kind of tickling ideas,” but that the value of LaunchVT’s Demo Night was in the exposure.
