Board

Who decides what the standard says.

A standard that reflects one point of view is a house style. The board is being seated to cover the parties a pitch competition actually involves, each for a fixed term, each with a vote on every change. Seats are unpaid.

Michael Kranitz

Chair of the Council · President, Pitch Competition Standards Council LLC

Michael Kranitz

Founder and CEO, LiveJudge™ · Founder, HeliStorm, Inc. (501(c)(3))

Thirty-plus years founding, running and exiting software companies, most of them built because the existing tools could not do the job. He founded Eventsquid, end-to-end event registration and management software, and served as Executive Vice President of HotelPlanner following its 2023 acquisition. Before software he practiced law for eleven years in corporate-reorganization litigation, which is where the council's insistence on published rules, declared conflicts and a record you can appeal against comes from.

  • Vanderbilt University Law School (1985)
  • University of Florida (BS in Economics - 1982)
  • University of Florida, Student Hall of Fame (1982)
  • Founder, Eventsquid (acquired by HotelPlanner, 2023)
  • Founder, RCUniverse (acquired by Hearst / MediaNews, 2007)
  • President, DriveOff.com (acquired by a Microsoft / Ford joint venture, 2000)
  • VP of Microsoft CarPoint, then of MSN's auto network
  • Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Rocky Mountain finalist (2008)
  • University of Florida Gator 100 (2022) for Eventsquid
  • Author, Look Before You Lease
  • Founder of HeliStorm, a judged national event at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
Full biography The complete record, at kranitz.com

Governance

Independence, and what we disclose.

The council is a Colorado LLC. Its conflict of interest is stated here in full rather than left to be discovered.

Legal entity Pitch Competition Standards Council LLC, a Colorado limited liability company

Disclosure of interest

The council was founded by Michael Kranitz, who is also the founder and CEO of LiveJudge™, a commercial scoring platform. Although the standard is software neutral, the council names LiveJudge™ as its reference implementation because it initializes with the rubric onboard, which helps maintain uniform standards across events.

Conformance is defined by the published weights and the per-criterion breakdown a host releases, never by the product used to produce them. And no board member, including a founding one, votes on a change in which they hold an interest.