Cox Business and Inc. magazine have announced the finalists of Get Started Tucson (#GetStartedTucson) taking place on Wednesday, May 14, 2014 at the Tucson Scottish Rite, 160 South Scott Avenue, Tucson, Arizona.

The prize package has also doubled including $5,000 cash, one free year of Cox Business service*, a robust marketing package from Cox Media, and Involta’s compliant cloud VM Ware virtual server for one year all valued at nearly $11,000.  The networking kicks off at 5:30 p.m. and spots are still available to attend the live, free event.  Registration is available at www.coxblue.com/getstartedtucson.

Over 20 businesses applied to present at Get Started Tucson. The businesses selected to pitch at the live event were selected based on innovation, ease of implementation and benefit to the community.  The five finalists are:

  • Darling Geomatics is a 3D scanning and modeling services for aerospace, defense, civil engineering, architecture, archaeology and entertainment industries.
  • Southwest Spirits is Tucson’s first Sonoran based distillery creating premium, local and organic vodka, gin and tequila.
  • Outski combines travel planning, booking tools, social collaboration and a built-in savings account in one online tool making planning for travel easy and accessible to anyone.
  • SmartStar provides digital educational games to empower young people by teaching practical real-life skills in a fun, engaging, and interactive experience.  SmartStar’s objective is to equip children with the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills needed for life.
  • Scraps on Scraps is a residential food waste/compostable material pick up company with a goal to help individual households reduce the amount of compostable materials in our landfills.

A representative from each of these companies will pitch their idea in 2.5 minutes to a distinguished panel of experts.  One winner will be named to receive a prize package valued at nearly $11,000 which includes:

  • $5,000 cash
  • Cox Business service for one year valued at $1,000
  • Cox Media marketing package valued at $3,300 including digital creative consultation, Google analytics consultation, web ads and Cox.com webmail campaign.
  • Involta’s compliant cloud IaaS  free VM Ware virtual server for one year valued at $1,500. Package includes:  Single Processor Power, 512 MB RAM, 5 GB Storage, 50 GB Metered Bandwidth, CentOS, Apache, Perl, PhP, MySql.

Local partners helping to make Get Started Tucson possible include Inside Tucson Business and Involta.

Local businesses not competing are encouraged to attend this free event for networking and learning opportunities from accomplished leaders in digital marketing, funding and business growth strategy.

The event will begin at 5:30 p.m. with networking and will include food and drinks.