STOCKTON, Calif. — September 23, 2026 — (KOREWIRE) Seventeen companies applied for a spot in the Superpowers for Good Live Pitch on September 30, 2026. After screening the field, judges Paul Lovejoy, Sherwood Neiss and Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau selected four companies they found especially compelling, and now they are preparing to put those opportunities under closer scrutiny in front of investors.
The finalists are Airthium, Anywhere Dx, Immunomatics and Eagle Cathedral City.
The Live Pitch begins Wednesday, September 30, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern, with SuperCrowd.tv serving as the primary viewing venue. The program is syndicated to the e360tv Network, which reaches nearly 2 million monthly viewers on Roku and Amazon Fire TV, and will also stream on LinkedIn, YouTube and the Superpowers for Good Substack. Registration is free at TheSuperCrowd.com/events/live-pitch-2026-q3.
For the judges, selecting the four finalists was only the beginning.
The Live Pitch gives them the opportunity to move beyond application materials and prepared presentations to ask the questions investors face when deciding whether an exciting company also represents an attractive investment. Each founder has five minutes to present, ten minutes of questions from the judges and five minutes of questions from the audience, followed by a one-minute closing argument.
Four Very Different Opportunities
The finalists span industrial decarbonization, home diagnostics, transplant medicine and community nightlife but share one thing in common: all are raising capital on Wefunder.
Airthium, a Y Combinator-backed company led by co-founder and CEO Dr. Andrei Klochko, is electrifying industrial heat. Its Stirling-engine-based heat pumps deliver up to three times more heat per unit of electricity at temperatures up to 1,000°F, and the same machine is designed to provide seasonal energy storage. The company puts its target at 3% of the world's annual CO2 emissions.
Anywhere Dx, led by co-founder and CEO Nathalya Mamane, makes the first lab-grade, instrument-free molecular diagnostic that anyone can use at home like a pregnancy test, starting with strep throat. The company aims to close the gap between feeling sick and getting treated for rural, low-income and underserved communities while curbing the antibiotic overuse that drives antimicrobial resistance.
Immunomatics, founded and led by computational biologist Lidio Meireles, PhD, is developing AI-based donor matching to make transplants safer, tackling premature graft failure and graft-versus-host disease across the thousands of solid organ and blood stem cell transplants performed every year. A former Vertex Pharmaceuticals scientist and a blood stem cell transplant survivor, the company is raising from the crowd.
Eagle Cathedral City, in the Palm Springs area, is building an inclusive LGBTQ+ bar designed to run as a community engine: funding the Transgender Health and Wellness Center, sponsoring local LGBT sports teams and sharing revenue with local LGBT creators. Founder and CEO Phillip Nalwalker, a software engineering leader for more than 25 years, is raising up to $1.235 million on Wefunder using a revenue participation agreement.
That diversity means the judges won't be applying a single formula to every pitch.
Instead, they will be looking for evidence that each founder understands the problem being solved, the market opportunity, the economics of the business, the risks ahead — and why the investment being offered makes sense for investors.
Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau: Does Impact Strengthen the Business?
Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau, Senior Investment Associate for Impact Investing at KingsCrowd, evaluates opportunities on two dimensions at once: whether a company's positive impact is embedded in its business model, so that impact grows as the company grows, and whether there is evidence of a durable, scalable business underneath the mission.
“Impact is strongest when it isn’t something a company does on the side—it is built into the engine of the business,” Bouhelier-Gautreau said. “I’m looking for companies where growth itself creates more positive impact. But mission alone isn’t enough. I also want to see a compelling market opportunity, a scalable model and evidence that the company can build a durable business while delivering the impact it promises.”
Paul Lovejoy: What Could Go Wrong — and Is the Investor Being Rewarded for the Risk?
Paul Lovejoy, Principal Investment Advisor at Stakeholder Enterprise, approaches crowd investing from the perspective of investor financial well-being and disciplined capital allocation. He listens for founders who understand their risks as clearly as their opportunities: the assumptions embedded in the projections, what has to break for the plan not to work and whether the upside actually matches the risk.
“Every early-stage investment comes with risk, so I want to understand whether the founder really knows where those risks are,” Lovejoy said. “What assumptions have to be right for this plan to work? What happens if they’re wrong? And, importantly, is the potential return sufficient to compensate investors for taking those risks? A compelling story matters, but disciplined investing means looking just as carefully at what could go wrong.”
Sherwood Neiss: Show Me the Evidence
Sherwood Neiss, General Partner at Crowdfund Capital Advisors and one of the people who helped write the framework that became Regulation Crowdfunding, brings a capital-formation lens to the pitches, testing whether the companies' aspirations are supported by evidence: what the company has already demonstrated, whether customers are buying, whether management has shown it can execute and how this round changes the trajectory of the business.
“Founders can paint an exciting picture of where a company is going, but investors need evidence that the business is actually moving in that direction,” Neiss said. “I want to see what management has already accomplished—customers, revenue, traction, milestones—and whether the team has demonstrated that it can execute. Then I want to understand exactly what this capital unlocks. The best raises connect the money being raised to measurable progress in the business.”
"The pitches tell you what a founder believes. The judges' questions tell you what a founder knows — and this time the conversation doesn't end when the broadcast does," said Devin Thorpe, CEO of The Super Crowd, Inc. and host of the Live Pitch. "After the show, the four founders come back on Zoom for a working session with the investors who are considering them. The private investor Zoom provides another forum for investors to have their questions answered. That is where a good pitch turns into a good decision."
Selection for the Live Pitch does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation to invest. Investors should review offering materials carefully, consider their own circumstances and conduct appropriate due diligence before making any investment.
Watch — and Join the Conversation
The Superpowers for Good Live Pitch streams primarily on SuperCrowd.tv on Wednesday, September 30, beginning at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Viewers can ask questions and vote for their favorite company from their phones during the broadcast; the audience vote decides the SuperCrowd Award, and the judges select the Judges' Choice Award.
At 7:00 p.m. Pacific / 10:00 p.m. Eastern, the founders return for the Private Investor Session on Zoom — a working conversation with the people who are considering an investment, not a second webinar. The pitches are not repeated; watch the 5:00 broadcast first, then join.
Both parts are free. Viewers register at TheSuperCrowd.com/events/live-pitch-2026-q3; those who want to join the investor session choose "Registration for Investors," and the Zoom link arrives by email the moment they finish.
About the Superpowers for Good Live Pitch
The Superpowers for Good Live Pitch is a recurring televised pitch competition produced by The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, and open at no cost to companies raising capital under Regulation Crowdfunding that commit to the Community Capital Principles of the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3). Founders present to a panel of professional investors before a national audience of impact investors on SuperCrowd.tv, syndicated to the e360tv Network. The top-ranked Regulation Crowdfunding raise of 2025 in Kingscrowd's rankings was a Superpowers for Good winner; the winner of the January SuperGreen Live pitch reported raising $170,000 in the 30 days following the competition.
Media Contact
Devin Thorpe
CEO, The Super Crowd, Inc. a PBC
801-930-0588
https://TheSuperCrowd.com
