Meet the Finalists of the $1M Dollar Pitch Competition

Inbound

August 5, 2024

Meet the Finalists of the $1M Dollar Pitch Competition

Get ready to meet the next wave of tech startup game-changers! We’re thrilled to announce the finalists of the $1M Dollar Pitch Competition at INBOUND 2024.

From a cloud-based financial department for startups to a marketing platform connecting brands with community-minded content creators, come September, they’ll all be giving their best pitch in front of an all-star panel of judges for a chance to win an investment of up to one million dollars from HubSpot Ventures.

Meet the finalists and founders who will be coming to INBOUND!

EMILY STEELE, Hummingbirds

The CEO & cofounder of Hummingbirds, a marketing platform that connects brands with community-minded content creators, Emily believes the future of marketing revolves around people exploring products, places and experiences and sharing what they love about them. She built Hummingbirds to highlight the impact a group of enthusiasts can make for local shops, emerging businesses, and established brands alike. Empowering a “charm” of advocates to champion products and services encourages growth and vibrancy—just like small but mighty pollinators that give her company its name.

ALYONA MYSKO, Fuelfinance

Alyona Mysko is the CEO and founder of Fuelfinance, a cloud-based financial department for startups. As CFO-turned-entrepreneur, she leads Fuelfinance in managing over $250 million in P&L for clients such as Hampton, DressX, and Steezy. Their innovative approach to financial planning and reporting has enabled their clients to secure funding from top-tier VCs, including a16z, Sequoia, and YC. Fuelfinance has been recognized as Product of the Day on Product Hunt, received the #2 Golden Kitty Award, and has been featured in Masters of Scale, Business Insider, CNN, and American Banker.

RORY SADLER, trumpet

Rory Sadler has been a sales ninja his whole career starting as an SDR at hospitality startup Catapult working up to Sales Lead, followed by senior AE at Learnably before going on to bootstrapped unicorn Hotjar leading their EMEA sales team. He founded trumpet in 2022 with exited founders of DesignMyNight, Nick Telson-Sillett, and Andrew Webster.

MARISSA HUGGINS, Spontivly

Marissa Huggins is the co-founder and COO of Spontivly, a leading data analytics platform empowering teams to build simple data dashboards without needing a data engineer.

At Spontivly, Marissa oversees customer experience, marketing, and product development. She previously led an accelerator community that grew to 5,000 members during her tenure. In 2023, Marissa was recognized as the Top Youth Entrepreneur of the Year in North America and Tampa Bay's Emerging Tech Leader.

PRANAV PIYUSH, Paramark

Pranav is the CEO and Co-founder of Paramark.com. They help CMOs and CFOs invest in marketing with confidence and predictability through advanced machine learning. Understand marketing’s incremental impact, set budgets, run experiments, and forecast results accurately.

With 15 years of growth and marketing experience at companies like PayPal, Dropbox, Adobe, and BILL, Pranav is convinced that CMOs deserve better measurement solutions and is dedicating the next 15 years to this mission!

KA LING WU, Upsolve AI

Ka Ling is the co-founder and CEO of Upsolve AI (backed by Y Combinator). Before Upsolve AI, Ka Ling led product development at nPlan, a Series A AI & construction tech startup, focusing on client expansion. Prior to her stint at nPlan, she spent four years at Palantir, where she led enterprise digital transformation projects, managed client engagements and stakeholder relationships, and spearheaded the creation of Palantir's HyperAuto product (featured in Palantir's S-1) from inception to market launch. Ka Ling also opened the Korea market for Palantir.