April Caldwell was relatively used to winning pitch competitions when she geared up for Bloomberg’s “2 Minute Drill.”
She had won $1,500 in a pitch contest at State College of Florida in 2020 and, shortly after pitching at Bloomberg, won the St. Petersburg Pitch Night prize.
“You’d think it’d be easier after a few times, and since you’re at home in the comfort of your own office, but it’s equally as nerve racking,” the CEO and co-founder of FayVen said. “My expectation was to get our name out there, thinking, ‘Hopefully someone sees us that watches Bloomberg late at night.’”
FayVen connects venues and vendors in an online marketplace, currently in beta mode. The four-year-old startup won a $10,000 investment and $40,000 worth of prizes, many of which come from the show’s sponsors and past winners. Caldwell is still working out the terms of the investment, which, if agreed upon, would come from Washington, D.C.-based Outpost Ventures.
Beyond the potential $10,000 investment, the company is entirely self-funded. If Caldwell were to accept the investment — which she stated would need to be in convertible notes due to the company's infancy — it would go toward web development.
That in itself is a unique setup. Lakeland-based Florida Polytechnic University students are working on building out FayVen’s technology as part of their senior capstone project. It’s not the first time the company has worked with students: The technology was initially given to Fort Myers-based Florida Gulf Coast University before making its way to Lakeland.
The company, founded in 2018, originally stemmed from Caldwell’s previous startup called the Princess and the Popper, which sold gourmet popcorn. Caldwell couldn’t sell the product at stores or ship it, so it relied on selling at local events — but found pain points in that, too.
“We found the events we went to had no foot traffic, no return on investment; we didn’t have our target market there,” she said. “There’s no transparency for events, the pricing, who the point of contact was; you never knew the logistics of where you were supposed to go.”
The site is slated to fully launch in mid-May. Caldwell is a member of both Embarc Collective and the Tampa Bay Wave and is not actively pursuing a pre-seed round but is open to conversations.
“I want people to see FayVen as a resource for small businesses,” she said. “We’re very community centric and want people to see the value and build the other small businesses throughout the community.”
As for following in the footsteps of some other Tampa Bay companies, and going on another, larger pitch competition show?
“I would definitely consider it,” Caldwell said. “I don’t think I’ve ever turned down an opportunity to pitch.”
