Waterville-based Dirigo Labs crowns winner of inaugural $25K pitch-off
Courtesy / Central Maine Growth Council
BluShift Aerospace team members accept the $25,000 prize at the Dirigo Labs contest. From left, Lead Mechanical Engineer Luke Saindon, CEO and founder Sascha Deri, and Operations Manager Lindsay Becker.
Dirigo Labs has crowned the winner of its first business pitch-off contest: bluShift Aerospace, which pitched the potential for its “bio-derived fueled” hybrid rockets to reduce the space industry’s environmental impact on Earth.
Along with accolades for having the best overall pitch delivery, capital strategy and potential impact on the state’s economy out of 12 competing businesses, the Brunswick-based company was awarded a $25,000 prize, sponsored by Skowhegan Savings Bank.
BluShift also received a year's membership for a dedicated desk at the Bricks Coworking & Innovation Space in Waterville.
The pitch-off was the first for Dirigo Labs, a Waterville accelerator that operates under the Central Maine Growth Council and is supported by several organizations, academic institutions and investment firms.
The contest's cash prize will come in handy for the company, whose CEO, Sascha Deri, has said one drawback of being based in Maine is that bluShift doesn’t have the same access to capital that it would enjoy on the West Coast.
“Being in Maine means that talented individuals who love aerospace but also love Maine now have an option outside of going to Florida, Texas or California,” he said in an interview last October. Perhaps the biggest challenge has been to get regional private investors in comfort zones outside of Maine’s ‘four F’s’ — forestry, farming, fishing and fermentation.”
Nevertheless, Deri said at the time that there’s plenty of potential for Maine to become “Cape Canaveral North,” given the state is “uniquely capable” of enabling commercial nanosatellite launches into polar orbit.
In its mission to become the “Uber to space” for sending small payloads and nanosatellies into low-Earth orbit, bluShift Aerospace has already brought in investments from the Maine Technology Institute and a crowdfunding campaign.
Deri said the money would help the company “move ahead with a series of critical milestones, including an [U.S. Federal Aviation Administration] launch analysis and a rapid-fire sequence of exciting engine tests.” BluShift plans to kick off commercial suborbital launch services this year, and to be launching over a half a dozen times annually by 2025.
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