NORTH SHELBY – The final round of the Spark Match pitch competition was hosted at the Birmingham Venture Club’s 31st Annual Meeting on Dec. 8.

Spark Match is a signature initiative of the Birmingham Venture Club. In Spark Match, emerging companies face-off in head-to-head battles where each makes a three-minute presentation on their business. The audience selects the winner of each round by voting live on their mobile phones.

The Spark Match Pitch Competition was sponsored by Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP, Oakworth Capital Bank, and Vaco.

The final round was the culmination of the tournament-style pitch competition that began in May. An audience of more than 350 attended the Dec. 8 event and voted to determine the winner of the 2016 Spark Match Competition.

From the eight companies that pitched in the first round, AlternaVisit and Nourish ultimately reached the finals to compete for the chance to earn $10,000.

In their final pitch, the companies focused on the investor perspective and had three minutes to address why an investor should back their company. The audience members were asked to vote as if they were an investor, and AlternaVisit, which is a healthcare technology startup located in Shelby County off U.S. 280, won the crowd vote to become the winner of the Spark Match pitch competition.

“Congratulations to AlternaVisit and Nourish for their success in reaching the final round,” Paul Pless with the Birmingham Venture Club said. “Spark Match highlights the fantastic position of the Birmingham Venture Club – bringing entrepreneurs, investors and advisors together. We hope that Spark Match and other unique initiatives of the club will continue to generate entrepreneurial excitement in Birmingham.”

“We are grateful to the Birmingham Venture Club for hosting this new competition, and we are honored to have won the 2016 Spark Match Competition,” said Tom McDougal, CEO and founder of AlternaVisit. “The prize money will be used to advance our software development and to launch our new mobile app scheduled for release in late January 2017.”

The Birmingham Venture Club encourages local entrepreneurial investment and success by supporting committed entrepreneurs, facilitating information-sharing and relationship-development opportunities, and stimulating investment capital.

AlternaVisit is revolutionizing the physician office visit with convenience and efficiency, saving valuable time for both patient and physician. As a software-as-a-service solution, AlternaVisit extends the existing patient-physician relationship into the virtual world through secure and structured communication for basic care need questions.

AlternaVisit offers significant competitive advantages over other solutions including telephone-based care and telemedicine virtual office visits. With AlternaVisit, “the Office is Optional.”