From: To: Jeffrey Epstein <[email protected]> Subject: Fwd: The 11 winners of the LAUNCH Festival 2015 (and why they won) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2015 13:54:56 +0000 Fun to read Co-authored with iPhone auto-correct Begin forwarded message: From: Jason Calacanis Date: March 9, 2015 at 5:16:15 AM PDT To: Subject: The 11 winners of the LAUNCH Festival 2015 (and why they won) Reply-To: Jason Calacanis We just finished up a marathon three days at the LAUNCH Festival here in San Francisco. We had 11,700 folks registered and thousands in the audience for three packed days, across two stages. This year we truly tipped over from a `conference' (what we called the event for the first four years) to a Festival (what we've called the event for the last four years). 50 startups competed on stage and there were 11 winners. In this email I will explain why they won, in my opinion. Important note on judging: There are six members of our Grand Jury at LAUNCH. They see every single presentation and pick the winners. I am not part of the Grand Jury. As the event has grown to include "The Incubator" and the LAUNCH Fund, we have decided that companies we have invested in via these two entities are disqualified from winning the top prize. This seems only fair to us!* Abra Overall Winner http://ytgr0kKwbMs5o Bitcoin has suffered because no one has created a killer app for it -- Abra just did. Their BHAG is to create "human ATMs," who are essentially Uber drivers with cash. You give a person in Los Angeles cash and they send it to a "human ATM" (HATMs) in Mexico. Those HATMs get to take a percentage of the transaction that they set. That percentage is transparent, so a marketplace will emerge, driving fees down and increasing performance (just like the rating system and UberX vs. Uber Premium dynamic). The key to all of this is that Abra NEVER holds the money. Instead, it uses bitcoin to move your money around the world. If you lose your phone, you lose your money