First there were 10, then there was one. Competing head-to-head with an array of hardware startups in front a set of Judges made of prominent VCs and Entrepreneurs. BotFactory managed to come out on top in the MakerCon Launch Pad Competition to win the Grand Prize of $5000 and a free booth at Makerfaire! With only 5 minutes on stage, our intrepid CEO Nicolas Vansnick had to put on his best performance, pitching hard the problem and how Squink solves it. After the pitch, the judges put us under some harsh interrogation, questioning our market, our machine capabilities and team. After judging us and the other finalists on elements like 'application to real world problem or need', 'commercial viability and target market', 'originality of idea or product' and 'quality of pitch and documentation of the product' BotFactory was awarded first prize! Woohoo!

What's next? Well first you can expect to hear more about us in Make Magazine; one of the perks of being the winner is extensive and exclusive coverage in Make Magazine. The prize money will likely extend our burn rate a bit more and help us get those Squinks into everyone's hands. We were wandering about MakerCon and lots of people loved our machine - they can't wait to get it. So now it's up to us to reduce that leadtime, improve those functionalities and get everyone printin' circuits.