UF alumni to pitch startups at annual NY convention

Alex Sunnarborg will have 90 seconds to pitch his company to a crowd of about 400 investors, industry experts and possible partners.

Sunnarborg, 25, graduated from UF in May 2013 with a degree in finance. He is now a co-founder and the chief financial officer of Lawnmower, an app for iPhone and Android that helps people learn about cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, and invest in them.

UF alumni founded two of the 10 startup companies participating in Wednesday’s New York Demo Day, with the other being CFX, an online service for investors.

Startupbootcamp FinTech, which also includes several UF alumni, hosts the event each year. The company runs a three-month program that accepts startups from the financial technology industry and connects them to an international network of investors and partners.

The three-month program leads up to Demo Day, said 26-year-old Victoria Cacicedo, the head of the platform at Startupbootcamp FinTech New York.

“It is a celebration of all the work that the teams have been doing over the past three months,” Cacicedo said.

Cacicedo graduated in 2012 with a degree in industrial and systems engineering.

Sunnarborg said that he and his other co-founders stayed in Florida until early 2015, when they decided it was time to move to San Francisco and build Lawnmower in Silicon Valley.

After Cacicedo called the company and suggested its founders join Startupbootcamp FinTech in the summer, Sunnarborg and his team then moved the startup to New York.

Sunnarborg said UF helped him and his team form connections and learn information that led to the creation of Lawnmower.

“We still make UF and Gator jokes regularly in the office,” he said. “Gator Nation definitely continues to help.”

Cacicedo said the team’s status as UF alumni was simply an added bonus.

“It’s because they have a solid team and a solid product,” she said.

Startupbootcamp FinTech has helped push both the Lawnmower business and its app forward, Sunnarborg said.

“They are really trying to let us leverage their network as best as possible,” he said.

Following Demo Day, Sunnarborg said his team will likely stay in New York, building relationships with similar companies and working with other cryptocurrencies, such as Ripple and Ethereum.

“Connections are what opens doors in business,” he said.