What it’s like to be a HATCH or BEAR finalist
I arrive while the sky is still deciding between gold and indigo, the river breathing its cool across the street. The venue is a local treasure- a family-run roastery that turns into a candlelit listening room at night- brick walls warm with history, string lights threaded like constellations. It’s intimate the way a good idea is intimate: close enough to hear a heartbeat, big enough to hold a room’s attention.
Name tag, handshake, another handshake. Early evening is for orbiting, they told us, and so I orbit: investors in soft blazers, judges with notebooks like shields turned into harps, mentors whose eyes crinkle with the kind of experience you can only earn by surviving. I mention my company in a sentence, then again in a story; I catch the way a potential partner’s head tilts, the way a VIP laughs from the belly. There’s the bar- local libations and crisp ciders, a rosemary lemonade that tastes like the first day of summer- and platters of warm pretzels, dill curds, and crostini slick with honey. If I were a camera, this would be a montage: napkins, business cards, the swirl of a glass, the hopeful weight of a dream somewhere just behind my rib cage.
The CEDC team gathers us with a smile and a mic. The welcome is like a blessing: we’re thanked for showing up with our ideas, for trusting the room, for believing that the Chippewa Valley can be a stage large enough for anyone’s ambition. The keynote speaker follows- a local founder who rattled the door of failure for years until it opened anyway. She speaks of midnight spreadsheets, of cash runways and the cruelty and kindness of feedback, and in that hush between her sentences, I can feel the room’s permission: yes, yes, keep going.
The emcee is the voice of the evening- part lighthouse, part drumbeat. With a laugh that settles nerves, he introduces the judges by name and heartbeat: the investor who bets on teams, the operator who can smell a supply chain problem from across the street, the community banker who believes in Main Street as much as market share. He lists each contestant with a brief, applause-summoning tease, and we all feel a little taller for having our ideas spoken out loud.
When it’s my turn, the room tilts. I step to the front, where earlier the barista pulled perfect rosettas, and now the projector hums like a friendly engine. My pitch deck blooms overhead-clean slides, clear numbers, the waypoints I’ve rehearsed until they moved into my bones. This is “Shark Tank” style, five to seven minutes that are wider than they are long, and I can feel each second as a bead on a wire. I talk about the problem as if it’s a person we all know, the solution as if it’s a porch light we forgot we left on. The market size, the revenue model, the go-to-market steps- click, click, click- overhead like a constellation that finally makes sense.
There’s a moment where the room laughs at the right place, and I ride it like a current. There’s a slide where the numbers are humble and honest, and I let that be a kind of romance too: the love that lives in truth told plainly. I end on the image of a customer holding our product, the way her shoulders drop when a problem dissolves. Thank you, I say, and the thank you feels like a bow, a vow.
Questions bloom like spring after frost. The judges lean in, not to bite, but to taste. How defensible is your moat? What does your churn whisper to you? Who are you when a competitor undercuts on price? I breathe between answers. I don’t perform certainty I don’t own; I trace the edges of what I know, promise to learn the rest. A judge asks about unit economics, and I watch his pen hover, then write. Another explores partnerships with regional distributors, and I feel my own future opening like a door I can walk through.
Then the mic returns to the emcee, and the show keeps moving. One by one, the other founders set their ideas loose. Each pitch is a different kind of love letter: to clean water, to elder care, to smarter buildings, to music scenes mapped with math. The room holds them all.
When the last Q&A lands, we release breath we didn’t know we were holding. The judges disappear to deliberate behind a curtain of polite mystery, and the audience rises like a meadow in a breeze. People refill ciders, compare notes, debate favorites in clusters near the bar and beneath the sponsor banner. I stand for a moment by the big window, looking out at the river. It’s not quiet, but it’s a soft noise- the kind you can think inside. Friends tell me I did well. Strangers tell me they saw themselves in the problem I described. A mentor slides over with a napkin sketch of a potential pilot partner. The break is part respite, part marketplace, part chorus; everyone is singing the Valley tonight.
We’re called back to our seats. The emcee thanks the sponsors with the kind of gratitude that makes the logos feel like more than logos. Collaborating partners are acknowledged- the accelerator that offered office hours, the co-working space that donated the stage lights, the university lab that ran a test last week because belief moves faster than bureaucracy when it wants to. We applaud because we mean it.
Then the envelope- yes, literally an envelope- lands in the emcee’s hands. The air gathers around us like a held breath. There are honorable mentions, nods to courage and clarity, and my heart learns a new trick beat for each one. And then my name. It feels like it belongs to someone else for a second, someone steadier, someone who didn’t tremble in the hall before their turn. But it lands. It’s mine. I stand, and the room stands with me, and it’s the warmth more than the sound that I will remember.
The grand prize is five thousand dollars. It’s not a fortune, but tonight it is both oxygen and flint. It’s the pilot we couldn’t quite afford, the patent filing that wouldn’t wait, the stipend so I can buy time as surely as I buy inventory. They hand me the oversized check, and it’s ridiculous and perfect. Flashbulbs pop in the old-fashioned way and phones rise in the new one. I hold the check and the moment and try to memorize the exact shade of belief in my cofounder’s eyes.
Afterward, the night loosens its tie. People find me with congratulations that feel like small blessings. We line up for press photos beneath the sponsor wall, the judges joining with smiles that say ask me for coffee, I’ll say yes. The emcee tucks his mic into his pocket; the keynote is laughing with a cluster of students; a mentor is showing me a calendar on her phone with three possible times circled. Someone slides me a plate of the last warm pretzel pieces, and suddenly I’m starving.
Outside, the river keeps doing what rivers do- moving forward without hurry. Inside, the roastery-turned-stage returns slowly to itself: glasses gathered, lights dimmed, tables straightened. We drift toward the door with our coats and our plans, the night cool and generous on the sidewalk. I look back once, out of habit or affection, and the windows hold us in their glow for an extra beat.
That’s the part that feels the most like romance: not the prize money or the photographs, but the way a room like that looks at you and sees the best version of what you’re trying to become. Tonight, the Chippewa Valley and I chose each other. Tomorrow, we get to keep choosing.
(While ‘A Day in the Life of a Founder’ is inspired by real events and experiences, the story and characters are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.)