Facing a midnight deadline, the 30 “buspreneurs” on the Louisiana Startup Bus are fine-tuning their business plans and finishing up pitch videos as the bus rolls the last few miles to the South by Southwest festival in Austin this afternoon, says team conductor Terry Jones. “We had a huge pitch event this morning that was a tremendous success. Three of the teams on our bus pitched in front of some of the biggest names in the startup world,” says Jones, whom Daily Report reached as the bus pulled out of San Antonio, where this morning’s event was held at Rackspace. “We’ve got two camera crews on the bus right now interviewing people as we speak … and we’ve also got a reporter from Cleveland riding along. So I guess we’re the fun bus.”
The Startup Bus competition is essentially an elaborate pitch contest pitting small teams of the nation’s most promising entrepreneurs against one another to see who can come up with the best business idea over a three-day road trip to Austin. There are 10 teams from the United States participating, and one from Mexico. The Louisiana Startup Bus has roughly 30 riders, half of whom are from Baton Rouge.
Jones says a reception held for six of the 10 U.S. buses in Baton Rouge on Wednesday was a big success and provided great exposure to the city’s entrepreneurial momentum. “One of the other teams that was up on the stage this morning got up in front of this stellar panel of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from around the country and said they’ve never had as great or meaningful a time as they had in Baton Rouge on Wednesday,” Jones says. Semifinals for the Startup Bus competitions will take place Saturday, and finals on Sunday. Keep up with all of the Startup Bus action at the competition’s website here; and follow the Louisiana Startup Bus via Twitter here. Meanwhile, the Louisiana Startup Bus team has made a follow-up to their “I Wanna Be on the Startup Bus” video. It’s called “Turn My Mac On,” and you can check it out here.
