A ‘Silicon Valley’ actor uses his TV character’s skills to judge a Microsoft start-up contest

On Friday, Microsoft held its 13th annual Imagine Cup. The event takes place at TechFest, a huge conference held at Seattle’s convention center for Microsoft employees from all over the world.

Imagine Cup is a start-up competition for college students and 330,000 students from 100 countries entered this year. Friday was the finals, where three teams competed to be the big winner. It’s a big deal, so Microsoft brought in some big deal judges to make the final decision.

There was Alex Kipman, creator of Microsoft’s Kinect, Jens Bergensten, the Swedish co-creator of the insanely successful video game, Minecraft, and Thomas Middleditch, one of the stars of the TV show Silicon Valley. On the show, Middleditch’s character, Richard, launches a start-up called Pied Piper, which apparently makes the actor eligible to judge a real-life start-up competition. The emcee of Imagine Cup asked Middleditch if he’s anything like his nerdy character on the show.

“No, in normal life, IRL, in real life I’m a really cool guy. You know, I skateboard everywhere and I hang 10 and I just really party,” he said.

So, like I said, there are three teams left in this competition, representing three different categories: innovation, world citizenship and gaming.

The gaming team was flown in from Russia, where they presented an artistic black and white game inspired by M.C. Escher. The innovation team, E Fit Fashion, is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. They created software that would allow anyone to order custom made clothing for an affordable price.

“We believe that you don’t have to fit into clothes, you deserve clothes that are made to fit for you,” said E Fit Fashion’s Bianca Letti. “Customers enter their measurements, select their designed clothes and choose tailors who download the instantly customized patters and then produce and ship the results. Closets the world over are bursting with poorly fitting clothes.”

The last team, from Australia, is called Virtual Dementia Experience. Although there is no cure for dementia, they believe it’s very important for family, friends and doctors to have empathy for those suffering. So they developed a virtual reality simulation that allows well people to see the world how those with dementia see it.

After the presentations were given, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was brought out to help announce the winning team. He asked Middleditch how the backstage deliberating went.

“We screamed at each other, I was hit over 40 times physically,” Middleditch said, deadpanned. “But I kind of enjoyed it which is my own issue. But we deliberated and we did come up with a winner. Yeah. There you go. Anyone else want to add anything? Because my speech was incredible just then.”

E Fit Fashion was announced the winner and Microsoft’s Chief Evangelist, Steve Guggenheim, told me what they won.

“They’ve already won a $50,000 sort of starter. They actually won time at an accelerator, which means they get four weeks of in-depth training on turning the idea into a business,” Guggenheim said. “They also get a one-on-one with Satya [Nadella], so they have an opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with our CEO.”