ConnectWise Invites Companies to Submit Innovation Solution Ideas for 2023 PitchIT Competition : @VMblog
Final three contestants given opportunity to present on stage at
IT Nation Connect 2023; chance at $70,000 grant
Launched in 2018, ConnectWise’s 2023 PitchIT Accelerator Program
is poised to be the biggest and most competitive contest yet, after seeing a
record number of 18 companies participate in the program last year. This year’s
selected applicants will work with industry experts from ConnectWise and other
organizations to complete business accelerator sessions covering sales,
marketing, the Managed Service Provider (MSP) audience, value proposition,
market readiness and more, before they compete in a livestreamed pitch competition
later this year, from which three finalists will be chosen to present at IT
Nation. Contestants may submit applications online through
April 30, 2023.
“The success and enthusiasm among our PitchIT Accelerator
Program contestants are at the highest level we’ve ever seen. This competition
continues to be an incredible opportunity for creative and innovative
individuals in the IT Nation community to present their groundbreaking
solutions that solve challenges and needs for IT solution providers across many
practice areas,” said Sean Lardo, ConnectWise Evangelist. “We are excited to
see what this year’s contestants bring to the table and we look forward to sharing
our finalists’ solutions at It Nation Connect 2023 in November.”
The 2022 PitchIT Finals at IT Nation Connect saw AlertOps awarded first place, with Vonahi Security finishing second and Humanize IT finishing third. Winner AlertOps
presented their Alert Management and Response Orchestration tool, which ingests
signals across users’ tech stacks, facilitates alerting based on scheduling and
escalation, and automate downstream activities. As part of their first-place
finish, AlertOps received a $70,000 grant to help propel their business to the
next level, while runner-up Vonahi Security received a $30,000 grant to support
their business, which includes their SaaS platform that fully automates network
penetration testing.
“Our PitchIT experience has been a gamechanger for our business
and has led to an immediate impact on our overall growth and our approach to
operations and scale,” said Kam Srikanth of AlertOps. “From a standpoint of
visibility and exposure, our ConnectWise Marketplace product page views grew
300% compared to the prior year. We saw a 30% increase in inbound/warm leads
and shortened our sales cycle by 25% compared to the prior year. We were also
able to substantially shorten our customer onboarding time. These factors all
contributed to AlertOps’ most successful year to date.”
Created by ConnectWise in
2018, PitchIT is a competition and incubator specifically for innovators to
showcase a potential offering that could be built or integrated into the
ConnectWise platform. With a digital and cloud transformation unfolding before
our eyes, PitchIT illustrates the immense amount of talent the IT Nation Community
has to offer and solidifies ConnectWise’s promises to deliver more innovation
faster and to invest in partners’ growth.