During the past few years, startups have found a valuable partner in major consumer brands who provide real-world experience and impressive credentials. In exchange, these brands get in on the ground floor of a new technology, before the bidding war begins.
This year, Digiday will bring together Hilton Hotels with a hungry tech startup to solve a marketing problem. Startup entrants must be unfunded, must provide a technology solution to a digital marketing problem and should have a love for stiff competition. The winner will partner with the consumer brand in a beta test earning valuable experience and the cache of having worked with a national brand.
All entries will be screened by our judges and then winnowed down to a list of 8 finalists prior to the Digiday Platform Summit in Half Moon Bay, California. Finalists will be invited to travel to the Summit, where they will pitch their technology to a judging panel that will include executives from the featured brand partner.
Judges will include Joshua Sloser, vice president digital marketing & e-commerce, Hilton; David Slayden, director of BDW; and David Blumberg, managing partner of Blumberg Capital. They’ll be looking for a start up that can help Hilton solve a digital marketing challenge somewhere along their customers’ path to purchase–dreaming to planning, booking to check-in–or in the execution of follow up and loyalty programs. Innovation will be poised to scale.
If you think you have what it takes, enter here by August 1. Good luck.
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