This past month, Silverline and Salesforce teamed up for the sixth consecutive year to send a joint team of consultants and technology experts to Louisiana for the annual New Orleans Entrepreneur Week to donate 400+ hours of their time and talents helping local start-ups and nonprofits design and build solutions to meet their high-growth challenges. This year, we were excited to witness firsthand as NOEW broke all its previous records: the event hosted more than 13,000+ entrepreneurs and 185 fast-growing organizations and gave them a platform to meet and consult with dozens of national venture capital firms and strategic advisory partners.
The Salesforce and Silverline team is all smiles after an awesome round of pitches with these entrepreneurs!
We kicked off our week in the Big Easy by hosting the Salesforce-Silverline Challenge, an event in which nonprofits and for-profit entrepreneurs compete for Salesforce consulting and implementation services. This year we had a great line-up of challengers and Silverline was honored to offer the for-profit winner a package of services and licenses valued at ~$15,000. The Salesforce Power of Us Program also donated a Not For Profit Kickoff package to our nonprofit winner. In fact, all organizations that participated were offered the dedicated consulting services of our onsite team of volunteers throughout the week.
After a lightning-fast round of pitches, the team evaluated all the contenders for their business viability, fit with our Salesforce consulting service packages, and presentation style. The panel was excited to announce their top awards to Propeller, a nonprofit that incubates socially-minded and environmentally-focused ventures, and IDIYA, a for-profit member-based DIY makerspace and education center in New Orleans. The Silverline and Salesforce teams are incredibly excited to kick of transformational projects with these organizations to help them grow and scale, leveraging the power of the Salesforce platform.
The Silverline team dives right into a consulting session with for-profit Challenge winner IDIYA, who will receive $15k of services and Salesforce licenses
“NOEW 2016 was an incredible experience. I felt honored to contribute my Salesforce knowledge to help these passionate entrepreneurs achieve their goals” said Andrew Porter, a Silverline Solution Architect who volunteered his week to join the team in New Orleans. Lina Tsin, Silverline QA Manager and our resident AppExchange expert, added: “Our experience in New Orleans this year was such an inspiration. I can’t wait to see how these companies grow over the next year. Plus – what a blast!”
In the coming weeks, be sure to check back in for more updates about our experience at NOEW 2016, including recaps of the awesome Healthcare Innovation Summit, Women’s Business Summit, and our lessons learned during our deep dive consulting sessions with some of New Orleans’ most passionate entrepreneurs.
