ConnectWise is inviting companies to compete in its 2023 PitchIT Accelerator Program, a competition to determine the next great product or offering integrated into the ConnectWise platform. From the pool of contestants, ConnectWise will choose three finalists to present their solutions on center stage at IT Nation Connect 2023 on Nov. 8-10, 2023, in Orlando, Florida, and have the opportunity to win a $70,000 grant to help propel their business.

Launched in 2018, ConnectWise's 2023 PitchIT Accelerator Program is poised to be the biggest and most competitive contest yet, after seeing a record number of 18 companies participate in the program last year. This year's selected applicants will work with industry experts from ConnectWise and other organizations to complete business accelerator sessions covering sales, marketing, the managed service provider (MSP) audience, value proposition, market readiness and more, before they compete in a livestreamed pitch competition later this year, from which three finalists will be chosen to present at IT Nation. Contestants may submit applications online through April 30, 2023.

"The success and enthusiasm among our PitchIT Accelerator Program contestants are at the highest level we've ever seen," said Sean Lardo, evangelist, ConnectWise. "This competition continues to be an incredible opportunity for creative and innovative individuals in the IT Nation community to present their groundbreaking solutions that solve challenges and needs for IT solution providers across many practice areas. We are excited to see what this year's contestants bring to the table and we look forward to sharing our finalists' solutions at It Nation Connect 2023 in November."

The 2022 PitchIT Finals at IT Nation Connect saw AlertOps awarded first place, with Vonahi Security finishing second and Humanize IT finishing third. Winner AlertOps presented their Alert Management and Response Orchestration tool, which ingests signals across users' tech stacks, facilitates alerting based on scheduling and escalation, and automate downstream activities. As part of its first-place finish, AlertOps received a $70,000 grant to help propel their business to the next level, while runner-up Vonahi Security received a $30,000 grant to support their business, which includes their SaaS platform that fully automates network penetration testing.

"Our PitchIT experience has been a gamechanger for our business and has led to an immediate impact on our overall growth and our approach to operations and scale," said Kam Srikanth, AlertOps. "From a standpoint of visibility and exposure, our ConnectWise Marketplace product page views grew 300% compared to the prior year. We saw a 30% increase in inbound/warm leads and shortened our sales cycle by 25% compared to the prior year. We were also able to substantially shorten our customer onboarding time. These factors all contributed to AlertOps' most successful year to date."

Created by ConnectWise in 2018, PitchIT is a competition and incubator specifically for innovators to showcase a potential offering that could be built or integrated into the ConnectWise platform. With a digital and cloud transformation unfolding before our eyes, PitchIT illustrates the immense amount of talent the IT Nation Community has to offer and solidifies ConnectWise's promises to deliver more innovation faster and to invest in partners' growth.