Salty Lady Seafood Co. wins Innovation Summit pitch competition

Salty Lady Seafood Co., a family-run mariculture farm in Bridget Cove in Juneau, won the 2020 Innovation Summit pitch competition (Photo courtesy of Salty Lady Seafood Co.).

Last week at the Innovation Summit in Juneau, Meta Mesdag of Salty Lady Seafood Co. won the pitch competition, the first one she had ever taken part in.

Salty Lady Seafood Co., which was founded in 2018, operates a mariculture farm at Bridget Cove in Juneau. They will have their first oyster harvest in April but are still getting through the permitting process. Once that’s finalized, they will have their products available at Super Bear and Salt & Soil Marketplace in Juneau and Red Spruce in Auke Bay. She also hopes to sell directly to consumers. 

“I had never actually even seen a pitch contest,” Mesdag said. “We had six minutes to deliver our pitch and I delivered it in six minutes and three seconds… getting that much information based on this outline that they gave us — getting it all to fit in there and have all these pieces, that was actually the hardest part. That took a lot of time, really honing in and refining what topics we needed to cover.”

The Juneau Economic Development Council, who runs the Innovation Summit, provided participants with the opportunity to work one-on-one with a coach to refine their pitch.

“She was like, ‘Okay, time to shift. We need to start rethinking about what you’re doing because you’re no longer telling you’re story, you are actually needing to sell your product. So we need to actually talk about the value your product brings,’” Mesdag said

After shifting focus, Mesdag’s pitch highlighted the community impacts of their business in Southeast Alaska. She says that coaching made all the difference.

“I think it’s really cool that [Juneau Economic Development Council] put on the Innovation Summit and hosts stuff like that for people to participate and help build community awareness around entrepreneurs in our state that are trying to build businesses or have great ideas,” Mesdag said.

Mesdag took home $1,000 from the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, as well as $600 that was crowdfunded from audience members. Nigel Sharp and Jon Kamler of Aquagga Inc., who came in second place, won 25 percent of the winnings. Other pitch participants were Bradley Pizzimenti of Turnagain Heavy Lift and Ross Johnston of The Local.News.

Salty Lady Seafood Co. will have their products available at Super Bear and Salt & Soil Marketplace in Juneau and Red Spruce in Auke Bay. They also hope to sell directly to consumers (Photo courtesy of Salty Lady Seafood Co.).

The judges of the pitch competition were Mysty Rusk, Director at The Brink SBDC at the University of San Diego; Benton Moore, CEO of Sea Dragon Capital; Will Fowler, Founder of Signal Rock Capital and Samantha LaPierre, Senior Associate at the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.

“It seems like a good way to have people meet other entrepreneurs and actually have a platform to launch their business idea and get concrete feedback about it that would potentially help steer the direction they had,” Mesdag said. “For me, I wouldn’t have headed in that direction for the next stages of our business, I would have just kept keeping on where I’m at.”