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Metascale wins Southwest Regional Quick Pitch; PlasticsDecoded and Follow Inc. place second and third
Summary
Metascale (presented by Jocelyn Tan) won first place at the Southwest Regional Quick Pitch 2025 in Wildomar. Ten startups pitched five-minute presentations judged by local elected officials; PlasticsDecoded took second and Follow Inc. (FollowLink) placed third.
Metascale, a no-code, AI‑assisted platform for building 3‑D role‑playing simulations, won first place at the Southwest Regional Quick Pitch 2025 in Wildomar on the county competition circuit. Ten teams presented five-minute pitches followed by three‑minute Q&A sessions; judges included Cindy Warren (mayor, Murrieta), Ben Diedrich (council member, Menifee), Joseph Morbio and Stu Stewart.
Jocelyn Tan, who presented Metascale, said the tool reduces development time and cost for 3‑D simulations "by 10 times" and targets game studios and training organizations. Tan told judges the startup sells user licenses at about $12,000 and aims to grow revenue to roughly $1 million in the coming year. Metascale's rapid prototyping approach and an AI-guided authoring interface were central to Tan's pitch.
PlasticsDecoded finished second. Its presenter described a molten‑salt pyrolysis process designed to process mixed plastics without the extensive sorting traditional pyrolysis requires and said the founders had filed a patent in July and submitted an NSF grant application for Sandia National Labs testing. The presenter asked judges for introductions to local recyclers and county partners to support a planned pilot.
Follow Inc. (FollowLink), which placed third, pitched an objective‑news platform that builds a customized LLM and an open‑source dataset intended to reduce perceived bias in automated news generation. Founder Reid said the startup is seeking $2.5 million in funding primarily to cover compute costs and to refine the model.
Other presenters included Starsteps, a parenting app that uses an AI engine to suggest activities and offers a subscription tier; Grama on the Rim, a Halloween toy and book combo; My Kitchen, a subscription commercial‑kitchen/food‑hall concept for small food vendors; NairobiJets (bioimmune delivery); TX Genetic Research (MECFS/Long COVID genetic profiling); and VisaNow.ai (immigration document assistance). Several presenters cited provisional patents, early revenue or seed‑round targets; judges focused questions on market readiness, safety and go‑to‑market plans.
Organizers thanked regional economic development partners and announced the county finale on April 30 in Riverside.
The competition winner will advance toward the county-level finale where additional judging and prize money will be awarded.
