I'm waiting to catch the redeye from Seattle to New York for Web 2.0 Expo, having just left Seattle's Zino Zillionaire Investment Forum, where 28 companies vied for $150,000 in startup funding today. Zino is a very interesting blend of social circle built around a love of wine, and an investment forum. I know that sounds odd, but they seem to make it work--the companies they funded last year (END//outdoor and Healionics) reported back today on twelve months of high growth, deals closed, and products launched. And I have to say, the environment was pretty fun too.

In addition to helping two of the companies hone their pitches (one of which, Reality Gap, won the audience vote for Best Presentation), I participated on a panel titled "Due Diligence LIVE!" along with the following folks:

• Alan Smith, Fenwick & West LLP
• Geoff Entress, Rolling Bay Ventures (also affiliated with Madrona Venture Group)
• Sanjeev Jagtap, GrapeCity
• Bill McAleer, Voyager Capital
• Charles Stevens, Eventuate (and former Microsoft Corporate Vice President)

Our panel's job was to query the top six presenters chosen by the Zino investment board in order to help them make its final picks for top technology startup and top non-technology startup. The technology winner was Gogomo, a shopping widget/service that enables consumers to click an ad and purchase the advertised products without leaving the site they are on (as opposed to jumping off the site to Amazon or elsewhere), similar in several ways to Adgregate Markets, who presented at last week's TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. On the non-technology front, the winner was CHERRish Corp., creator of a cherry-based nutritional beverage claiming anti-inflammatory properties, similar in several ways to pomegranate-based products by POM Wonderful. Each company will receive a $50,000 investment, with CHERRish winning an extra $50,000 for best of show, for a total of $150,000.

I happened to be chatting with Gogomo's CEO Jeff Davis when they announced the winners; he was telling me that Gogomo leverages Microsoft's .NET Framework and has lined up a growing number of publisher and ad network partners. Congrats to Jeff & Co. for a solid presentation and deft handling of our panel's questions.

I have to say, I was curious coming into this event for the first time, wondering how the quality of companies would stack up against last week's TechCrunch50 lineup. My conclusion: I was impressed--the companies handled the 5-minute time limit on presentations well, with none running over in any embarrassing way. And more important: most of the startups had spent time thinking about exactly how to grab those first sales. Many at TechCrunch50 were simply building cool tech without solid plans for building a business. I would have put this Northwest lineup against similar Valley events without hesitation.

Many of the medical tech companies gave me a nice flashback to my earliest startup days working on SBIR grants for endotrachial tubes, electronic medical records, and clinical nano-biotech IP. And finally, the fact that roughly half of the companies were non-technical in nature was actually refreshing, providing a break from my usual fare, and delivering a good reminder that entrepreneurship is alive and well across the spectrum of business, and not just in the world of high-tech.

In a final note, I was a personal fan of the other company I coached, EMO-V, whose product Quu makes broadcast radio more interactive and creates a very compelling new product that I hope more and more radio advertisers will begin to explore.

The keynote speaker was Peter Ueberroth, who spoke broadly on growth companies from his position as Managing Director of investment company Contrarian Group Inc. I'll write a separate post about his contrarian comments on what his group looks for in its investments. But for the moment, I need to sprint over to B9 for the cross-country to NYC and on to Web 2.0 Summit.