Nerdtoberfest: Perfect Pitch Startup Competition and the Fight for The Unicorn Cup Heat Up

unicorn-cup-gns-1
William and Mahatma guard The Unicorn Cup before the competition.

The teams are set, the judges have confirmed.  Details on the fake company has been shared. It is time to see how the professionals pitch a tech startup. The area’s best startup incubators and accelerators are facing off in this head-to-head competition to take home the awesome Unicorn Cup and bragging rights.

The teams are:

Thomas Schumann and Patti DuBois from CEI
Nate Mortenson from Tallwave
Wiley Larson from ASU
Lauren McDannel and John Johnson from Seed Spot

Our distinguished panel of judges consists of:

Rebel Brown of Cognoscenti
Carine Dieudé of Altima Business Solutions
Jim Goulka of ATI
Christie Kerner of ASU
David McCaleb of ATI

Perfect Pitch is a contest where teams present the same fictitious technology startup company.  A group of expert judges will determine who gave the best pitch. The event is part of PADT’s Nerdtoberfest celebration of engineering and manufacturing in Arizona, and takes place from 4:30-6:00 on Thursday, October 27th at our Tempe offices.

Everyone is invited! We will have an overflow area set up if we get more than can fit in our seminar room where you can watch live.  We will also be streaming the event live to the world (watch this blog and social media for the link).

barqk-logo-200-1 If seeing the best of the best pitch is not enough, here is some info about our fictitious Company: barqk!

At barqk!,  we deploy the latest cloud based machine learning and big data algorithms to convert your dog’s barking into words on your mobile device so that you can understand your pet’s needs, if they are sick, and be made aware of danger. Sometimes our pets can be very nervous and we do not really know what their issue is. Some dogs bark nonstop and it might be a sign that they are experiencing some deeper problems. Calming treats offered by KarmaPets have helped many dogs owners. 

Dog owners face significant problems communicating with their pets. Although you can train a dog to obey commands, the dog cannot tell it’s owners what it needs or wants. This leads to significant stress for the owner and may lead to death when the animal cannot communicate an obvious and present danger.

Barqk! has created a cloud-connected wearable device for dogs that records their barking and uses machine learning and big data algorithms to convert dog-speak into human-speak. The translated words are sent via text or through our app to the owner’s phone. Initially, the owners provide feedback to the network, and the responses of all owners to every dog’s bark are collected as big data then fed through our proprietary algorithms that use Bessel functions and advanced machine learning approximations to develop a consensus on what a given bark means. Over time a translation for each dog will be developed and we expect 87% accuracy.

Get Your Ansys Products & Support from the Engineers who Contribute to this Blog.

Technical Expertise to Enable your Additive Manufacturing Success.

Share this post:

Upcoming Events

Jun 15
- Jun 19
, 2026
Turbo Expo 2026
Jun 18
, 2026
Best Practices for Running Ansys Fluent on GPUs - Webinar
Jun 18
, 2026
E-Mobility and Clean Energy Summit
Jun 30
, 2026
Ansys 2026 R1: Aeroacoustic Modeling with the Fluent GPU Solver - Webinar
Jul 15
, 2026
Arizona Aerospace Summit
Aug 10
- Aug 11
, 2026
2026 CEO Leadership Retreat + Golf Tournament
Aug 23
- Aug 26
, 2026
Small Satellite Conference 2026
Aug 24
- Aug 27
, 2026
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo - 2026
Aug 31
- Sep 03
, 2026
Turbine Engine Technology Symposium - 2026
Sep 14
- Sep 19
, 2026
IMTS 2026
Oct 21
, 2026
2026 Southern Arizona Tech + Business Expo
Nov 18
, 2026
2026 Governor’s Celebration of Innovation

Contact Us

Most of our customers receive their support over the phone or via email. Customers who are close by can also set up a face-to-face appointment with one of our engineers.

For most locations, simply contact us: