Last Wednesday CBQ and I attended Startup Riot on behalf of Highgroove. We heard 3 minute pitches (and 3 minutes of questions from an expert panel) from 25 startups. This is easily the biggest event in the Atlanta startup community; missing it is not an option and sponsoring was a no brainer for us. We love working with startups, since we used to be one. Read more to learn about how we sponsored this event, and what we got out of it.

First of all: What is Startup Riot SHOW?

“Startup Riot SHOW is an all-day event which highlights 25 startups through three minute, four slide presentations given by the startups. The startups subsequently answer questions from a judging panel for three minutes. There are a few important aspects that make Startup Riot SHOW different than any other startup conference you’ve heard about or been to.”

Pitching an idea in three minutes isn’t easy. It’s the perfect amount of time for each presenter to not only convey what problem they intend to solve but also how. At Startup Riot, our involvement was not confined to three minutes but rather three events.

Highgroove achieved three goals with our sponsorship:

1. MAKE

   Collaborating: At the MAKE event we blogged live about how we lent a hand to developers there by offering help in the form of knowledge and programming chops. This environment is an extension of how we operate internally: collaborate, iterate and ship it, quick! We love building great web apps and the MAKE event allowed us to share our expertise. In addition to helping establish us as experts at building back-end web applications, we made some great connections and saw some of our open-source libraries for Rails in action, in the wild.

2. JOIN

   Recruiting: At the JOIN event we ran a table to present the allure of what brings the best Ruby developers to work here. A recruiting event is a long-term investment. The people you meet are looking for a great job, but they also know people who are looking for an great job, too. Even if they’re not a good fit for your company, you might have a connection for them, and they might have a connection for you. It’s networking 101, and Startup Riot’s JOIN event has netted us one fantastic hire, and we’ve got a few more in our queue (in our hiring process right now).

3. SHOW

   Networking: And lastly, at the SHOW event we mingled with some Atlanta’s most passionate and capable entrepreneurs. It was personally exciting as a rookie in the startup scene. By the end of the day networking and note taking had paid off. I had signed up for numerous Betas, exchanged cards, and handed out lots of wolfbrain stickers.

Congratulations to viaCycle on winning 1st place! We, of course, couldn’t be happier about more bikes on the streets here in Atlanta. More photos from the event are here. We’re already looking forward to next year, Sanjay.

For more on Startup Riot itself, check out:

• David Cummings Startup Riot 2012 Recap
• Smiley Steve on Startup Riot 2012

How does your company give back to the community that supports you?

Image credit: eyelovelife